


Land of Elephants

by cloudwatcher13



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Big Brother Mycroft, Depression, Divorce, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Holmes Brothers' Childhood, Jealousy, Kid Fic, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Mycroft Feels, Mycroft and his father don't get along, Mycroft has friends, Mycroft is bad at flirting, Mycroft is lazy, Parent-Child Relationship, Protective Mycroft, Sherlock is obsessed with elephants, Siblings, Sick Character, both are bored, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 23,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4759118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudwatcher13/pseuds/cloudwatcher13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Mycroft and Sherlock going on holidays with their father. It is a supplement story to "Growing up Among Goldfish" but can be read on its own.<br/>Father Holmes has to work abroad and takes along his sons. Mycroft is not impressed and Sherlock is bored. A lot. So many catastrophes have started that way and this is no exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waiting I -Sherlock

Sherlock watched the squirrels in the garden as he waited. You could see the car once as it came around the hill down near the river, from then it took three and a half minutes until it reached the gate. That was enough time to reach the door if he took two steps at once. He had practiced it the last two days, the trick was to cut the corner in the hallway towards the kitchen by slithering into it with full speed on his socks. The light was getting low outside, the grey and brown of the squirrels getting more and more unidentifiable from the bark of the trees.

“Why don’t you turn on the lights?” Bernhard switched them on and Sherlock rolled his eyes. With them illuminating his room, the view outside had turned pitch black. They looked both out into the black for a while.

“There!” The lights of a car flashed through the branches of the trees down the street. He jumped off the bench in front of the window, stumbling as his socks slid over the polished wood of the floor.

“Careful!” his father laughed as he caught him by the arm before he crashed into his bunk bed.

“Mycroft!” Sherlock jumped up and down next to the car while the older one heaved his suitcase out of the trunk.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed or something?” He handed him his coat to get rid of him and Sherlock took it with a wide grin.

“And no shoes.” Mycroft sighed pointing at his brother’s feet that slowly grew wet as he stood on the gravel.

"Come on.” With one hand on the back of the boy’s head, he steered him back inside, dropping his bag carelessly near the entrance.

 

“Well, and now that you are older, I thought we could go on holiday together, you and me and Mycroft.”

“And what about mummy? Won’t she feel lonely without us?” Sherlock remembered the one time they had left him at home alone for an hour because he was running a fever and Mycroft needed new shoes. When Mycroft and their mother had returned, he had been crying for fear and boredom. He shuddered.

“She will be going on holiday as well, without any of us to bother her for once.”

 

It was only when he already stood in the middle of Mycroft’s room that Sherlock remembered what their mother had told him about not bothering his brother in his new room. Not to go into his room without knocking. So he turned back and knocked as he closed it behind himself.

“That’s not how it works. “ Mycroft sighed, not looking up from his book. He was tilting with his chair, one foot against the desk holding him upright on the hindmost chair legs.

“Sorry.” He tiptoed towards the bed and crawled onto it to inspect a new terrarium that had found its way onto the set of drawers. It was filled with beetles. Their back was black and shiny like their father’s car. They were feeding on the corpse of a grey mouse Redbeard had caught on their stroll yesterday and Mycroft had taken from him.

“Burying beetles.” Mycroft said, anticipating the question without looking at him. Sherlock pressed his face onto the glass to watch them crawling busily over the sand on the floor. He fought the temptation to reach in and touch them, see if they felt as cold and shiny as they looked.

“Will granddad be eaten by insects as well?”

“Of course. And worms. The world would be covered in corpses otherwise.” The beetles began covering the mouse in the sand. Sherlock thought of how deep the hole had been they had lowered the wooden coffin into. Everyone had thrown in one small shovel of dirt. He had wanted to throw in more because the hole was so deep and there hadn’t been enough people to fill it completely with one shovel, but Mycroft had pulled him away with that iron grip on the collar of his coat. He hated when he did that.

“Did dad tell you?”

“Yes.”

“He says it will be enormous fun. That elephants live there.”

“Whenever he tells you something, you ought to keep in mind from whose perspective he is speaking. He will be working and leave the “fun” part to me.” The book closed with a resolute smack. “And from the way you have been behaving those last few hours you will be supplying me with never ceasing fun.”

“Where is India?”  
“Do they teach you anything at that school of yours?”

“There are things you don’t know either, mummy says.”

“Of course there are, but you just know nothing at all, brother mine.” Mycroft ruffled his hair as he passed him to pick the globe form the top of his bookshelf. He placed it on the floor in front of them, squatting down to slowly turn it. The land Mycroft pointed to was almost bigger than his hand, only his index finger was touching the blue of the ocean when he placed his hand onto the round of the globe.

“What about mummy? Don’t you think she would like to see an elephant?”

“Doesn’t that dog of yours need to be walked or something?”

“But you need to come with me, it’s getting dark soon.”

“Come on then.” Mycroft took his jacket from the hook on the door, a bored frown answering to Sherlock’s happy grin.


	2. Of Robots and Elephants - Sherlock

“Sherlock, be sensible. Chemicals are not allowed onto a plane. You can take the microscope but the chemicals are staying here.” After the housekeeper had signalled her defeat it was now their mother’s turn to try her luck on him.

“There is no point in pouting that is how things are.” She opened the suitcase again, removing several flasks of colourful liquids.

“Mycroft says they have different insects there than we do.”

“Does he? Well, if that is what he says, it is probably true.” She got down into an armchair with a sigh, refolding the few shirts and trousers Sherlock had fitted into his bag around the other clutter.

“Now, you will try to be not too much of a burden on your brother, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“I won’t be running away, I will do what he or dad tell me to do.” He spoke mechanically, it was a sermon he heard quite often.

Mycroft strolled in, a crooked smile on his face. “Got you something.” He reached into the bulgy bag he usually used for his trips to the library. The book was rather worn, but the elephant on the faded red cover promised great content. Sherlock grabbed it with both hands, snatching it from his hands like a starving man a piece of bread.

“Is it on elephants?”

“Not exclusively.”

“Thank you.” Their mother sighed, breathing hard as she tried to get up from the armchair. Mycroft nodded, disappearing without another word.

He was up long before breakfast, the morning of their departure. Redbeard in his usual habit of accompanying him wherever he went, sniffed each of the bags in turn as they were piled near the door. The house felt different at night. Since he had returned from school for the holidays, he had often ventured through the empty rooms, cataloguing the long shadows of different shades of dark. The doors of his father’s study were leaned, a long line of light cutting the darkness of the hallway into two. Somehow he hesitated to cross that imaginary border, the light disturbing the festively spooky mood of his morning, his father an intruder to the hours the house was rightfully his alone. The dog sheepishly kept walking on, his breath clearly audible in the silence of the room. It stooped the door open further, its head already vanished into the room.

“How serious is it?”

“I have no way of knowing, son. It’s…these things are rather unpredictable business. The place is a good one, McLaughlin suggested it. He is…moderately optimistic it will have an impact on the general…situation.”

“Dad, the dog.”

Mycroft’s head pierced the darkness, fixing him immediately to the spot he was standing.

“What is serious?” SHerlock asked, trying to divert from the fact he had been eavesdropping.

“Why are you up? Go, get washed and dressed, we ought to be leaving soon.”

 

The moment he entered the airport, he felt like he had been sleeping for a long time only now waking to a loud and colourful world he had so far had no idea existed. A boy in the queue behind them was studying him, he sat on top of a huge pile of suitcases on their trolley but they moved before he had thought of something to say.

The house was surrounded by a white brick wall, half covered in climbing plants, heralds to the green thickness of a garden beyond it. The plants fought with the house and its inhabitants for every inch of the ground, the path to the door and the elevated terrace running around the entire building always in threat of being soaked into the moist carpet of leaves and stems. The white of its outside made the house stand out from everything around, and Sherlock was surprised to find the inside to be much darker, most windows covered during the day in an attempt to keep out the humidity and heat. Their father left every morning quite early, leaving his sons to have breakfast with the young housekeeper who hardly ever spoke and had given up any attempts to offer entertainment when Sherlock had proclaimed himself to be too old to play ball with her. So they were mostly left to their own devices, Sherlock constantly in overdrive from all the things new around him. Mycroft lingered on the terrace most of the day, watching butterflies and geckos as they visited him in his usual spot on a deckchair near the backdoor.

“God, you are lazy.” Sherlock kept pacing around him in an attempt to catch his attention. Mycroft ignored him, staring into the distance.

“Not lazy, brother mine, just more focussed than you. But I can imagine that it should get boring with a brain as small as yours.”

The younger one slouched onto a bench opposite with theatrical opulence, staring in the same direction as his brother.

“Tell me a story.” he finally demanded.

“You’re getting too old for this nonsense. What about the book I gave you?”

Sherlock huffed and rolled his eyes. “Finished it ages ago.”

“Well then. Words.”

“Pirate, elephant, me.”

“You are so predictable, it’s unbelievable. Not really a challenge.”

Sherlock pouted, thinking hard. “Alright. Robot.”

Mycroft laughed. “Robot? Where did that come from? Well done.”

There was pink blush on Sherlock’s face upon the praise, one he was eager to hide.

“There once was a pirate called Redbeard. He was the annoying little brother of the very smart king.”

“Phh. Ya right. Predictable.”

“Come on, it’s warm and I’m tired.”

“Lazy.”

“You want to hear or not?” Mycroft leaned onto his elbows giving him a severe look. Sherlock covered his mouth with both hands in response. “Well, then. The prince was always off to new countries, looking for treasures. The king often thought of him because he never knew where the pirate would go next. Then, one day he went away because he had heard of a land where they had golden elephants and all he wanted was to bring one back so his brother and his mother would see what a brilliant pirate he was. The pirate prince was gone for a long, long time and experienced many adventures. During his absence the mother became very ill. She grew more tired every day and the king sent all his men to find a cure but there was none to be had and so he hoped the pirate would come back soon. “

Sherlock had listened attentively, though he was following a trail of ants on the floor with his fingers. They were larger than at home, you could feel each of their legs moving when they crawled over your hand. “Is she going to die?”

“No. But the king was so desperate to make her healthy again that he asked the doctors build a machine to cure her. They misunderstood and turned her into a robot. The king didn’t want his pirate brother to know so he kept it a secret and the pirate returned home and lived happily ever after.”

“Can you do that?”

“Specify.”

“Turn people into robots.”

“Who knows? Maybe I am a robot and you just never noticed.” Mycroft raised his eyebrows and laughed at his brothers’ horrified face. “But as usual you have missed the point of the story.”

Sherlock shrugged and returned to tracing the trail of the ants with his index finger. “I do want to see the elephants. Hope dad has time this weekend.”

“Don’t set your heart on it, brother mine.” Mycroft covered his face with his hands and before long he had drifted off into a light slumber to escape from the heat and the boredom.


	3. A Garden Party - Sherlock

They were more or less banned from the ground floor of the house as the weekend neared. That wouldn’t stop Sherlock, however, from being in the way of everyone all the time. A large tent had been delivered first thing in the morning; it took five men to set it up in the back of the garden. Sherlock watched as some of the staff begun winding fairy lights around the poles, crawled under each of the tables as they swung the big white cloths over their surfaces, landing on them like unmanned parachutes. He smelled each and every of the flower bouquets that were carried in hurriedly, their colours deep and impressive. One of the chefs made a half-hearted attempt to shush him away by giving him an angry stare when his hands wandered along the buffet where polished spoons and white plates were waiting to be filled with desserts later that night. But Sherlock was too far spun into this web of impressions as to take any notice of the people around him. Everything was new, everything seemed mysterious, his head swirled as if he had sat on a swing the entire day, head down turning around himself, his surroundings mushed together into one big swirl of colour and sounds. At home, visitors were scarce and he couldn’t remember having been surrounded by so many people outside school before. Eventually one of the maids took pity on him and sat him in a chair in the corner, asking him to make bows from pale green ribbon for the back of the chairs. He set to the task with the usual fervency, glad to have been given something to do. Mycroft could tell when his mind went into overload like this, when everything seemed to stream into his mind all at once. He would give him a very stern look and demand he should concentrate on himself to filter the important from the sensual clutter threatening to bury him alive. Sometimes he was grateful for such help but the problem was that up to a certain point these rushes of ecstasy produced by his brain were the most enjoyable thing he knew. It felt alive and vibrant, everything exciting beyond measure. Until it drowned him and pulled him into an exhaustion that would leave him dizzy and bad humoured for days. Sitting in that chair in the corner he could already feel the first waves of tiredness sweep over him.

When he woke, it was from the low humming of voices and the low sound of music. By the way the thin blanket had been tucked around his feet, he knew it would have been Mycroft who had carried him into the consoling solitude of the bedroom. Outside the open window, the light of candles and fairy lights seeped through the mosquito net. People were dancing, laughing and talking just below his window. He moved a chair so he could kneel on it, his hands resting on the window sill. His father wore a black suit and a bow tie, talking to other man who looked the same. The women wore long dresses some of which glittered all over and he yearned to feel the shiny fabric just to see if it felt like the skin of the snake Mycroft had once caught and showed him. So he slipped back into the shoes Mycroft had taken off for him, making his way through groups of people in the hallway. No one seemed to take any notice of him, he reached the garden unquestioned. The music grew louder and more distinct, he beat the time with two of his fingers against his thigh absentmindedly, watching the musicians play for a group of dancing couples. A woman in a dark blue dress approached his father and laid a hand on his shoulder which he took and kissed with a small bow, before joining the ranks of slowly circling couples. Sherlock watched in awe, trying to make out how they managed to glide past each other without ever colliding, the shiny dresses moving like boats on the waves of a lake in a mild breeze. Eventually he spotted his brother, leaning against a tree close to the table with the desserts. He held a plate that was filled with what looked like chocolate cake, looking unimpressed by the miraculous splendour of his surroundings.

“Feeling better?” Mycroft asked as Sherlock reached him and leaned his head against the older one in search of some support.

“You could have woken me up. I almost missed the party.”

“So? People getting drunk and lying in each other’s faces. What’s there to miss?”

Sherlock sighed deeply, feeling unable to express all the wonders his brother so obviously had chosen to ignore. He was startled from his thoughts when the woman his father had been dancing with shrieked suddenly before bursting into loud laughter. His father was bending over her, trying to stop her from falling over backwards as they had stumbled during their dance. She grabbed his back for balance and he had both arms around her in an attempt to straighten her up again.

“I’m positively going to be sick.” Mycroft groaned, slamming the now empty plate on a table nearby.

“You shouldn’t eat so much cake then.” Sherlock offered in an attempt to be useful but his brother’s eyebrows told him he was nothing of the sort.

“Yes, that’s what it is.” He answered, rolling his eyes.

“Would you like to dance, young man?” The woman had made her way towards them, holding out both hands to Sherlock who grabbed them instantaneously determined not to miss his chance of joining what looked like a lot of fun. She smelled of perfume and something sour, a little like their grandmother when she had met her friends for a glass of sherry.

“He really should be in bed by now.” Mycroft told her, holding out a demanding hand to his brother.

“Oh, Myci, don’t be such a spoilsport.” The woman giggled, already pulling Sherlock into the circles of dancing people.

“He hates when one calls him that.” Sherlock told her as he saw his brother’s face redden from the corner of his eyes.

“Sherli, some people are born old and can’t stand that others know how to enjoy themselves.” She swayed slightly more than most of the other dancers, Sherlock noticed but decided this was due to the fact she seemed to know how to dance much better than all the others. They seemed to evade her whenever they got close, some even jumping out of their way as their turns became faster and faster. Sherlock laughed loud as she began turning him around herself only holding him by the hands. Everything but her face turned into a blur of swirled colours, his hands began to dampen with sweat until he couldn’t hold on any longer, his small hands slipping from her grip and he stumbled backwards, out of control of his feet, everything turning violently before his eyes. He felt his father’s hands under his arms as he picked him up but couldn’t make out his face, as he saw him double. He also saw his shoes double as he vomited over them.

“Sorry, dad.” He whimpered meekly before he felt Mycroft clean his face with some tissue.

“That’s alright, sonny.” His father answered, though Mycroft didn’t look as if anything was alright. It was him who supported him on the way to the house and eventually put him in a chair in the kitchen with a glass of water.

“Had enough of a party now?” Mycroft muttered holding out a piece of dry bread to him. Around them a good dozen of people were busy leaning up the remains of the dinner. Sherlock nodded weakly then held out his arms to be picked up by his brother once more.


	4. Anatomy of Brotherhood - Sherlock

The next morning brought a new face to their breakfast table. She was young and wore her long hair in two braids and talked without ever taking time to breathe. Mycroft mostly ignored her, leaning his book decisively against the packet of cereals, a provocation their new nanny pick up on. Sherlock slowly wound himself onto a chair and watched his brother’s unmoving face as her serenade of words showered down on them both.

“Where is he?” he asked, reaching for the milk which Mycroft moved towards him without looking up.

“He had a very early appointment this morning. But we will use the time in a fun way, don’t you think?”

Sherlock gave her a brief look but ignored her otherwise, looking at Mycroft again. He had begun to fill his mouth with cereals at breath-taking speed, a sign of him supressing the urgent need to shout at someone.

“Why are you here?” Sherlock finally asked, spreading a thick layer of butter on his piece of toast.

“Because your dad thought it would be nice if you weren’t all alone here all the time. He will join us as soon as he can.”

“Julia, what my brother was enquiring to know was more of how you were chosen for this…unloved task my father is quite unwilling to fill himself. With your permission I shall satisfy his curiosity. Julia is an intern at your father’s office quite eager to leave a lasting and positive impression which is quite hard to do being one of ten odd almost undergrads crowding the hallways in the hope of being noticed. So she thought entertaining the sons of her boss would be a good start of worming her way into his affection. Little she knew that he will notice her here even less than if she was responsible for prewarming the rim of his tea cup.”

Julia’s mouth opened several times but no sound was produced. A common reaction by his surroundings when Mycroft decided to explain the situation to him. He watched aforesaid brother getting up without looking up from his book and pour a cup of tea which he then sipped, standing near the table, just like father did when he was fed up listening to the rest of the family bickering over a meal. Sherlock used the opportunity of confused an strained silence to shovel another generous helping of sugar into his bowl.

“Can we go and see some elephants?” he asked into the void that had filled the room.

“Of course.” Julia had regained her composure and smiled broadly at him before trying to smooth down his curls with both hands. She resumed her flood of chatter and hurried into the living room in search of shelter from Mycroft’s spite.

“Traitor.” was his brother’s whispered response as soon as she was out of their range of audibility.

Sherlock shrugged. “I want to see them.” He lifted the bowl to his lips and drank the entire milk in one go till he reached the film of half-resolved sugar at the bottom which he licked up, his face disappearing in the depth of the bowl.

“Well, opportunist then.” Mycroft sighed, taking the bowl from him.

“You don’t like her.”

“Well spotted. It’s nothing personal; it’s more the capacity she is here in. One shouldn’t mix those two levels all too easily.”

The streets were nothing like anything Sherlock had seen before. There hardly seemed to be any space between houses, the streets covered in people and other cars and other vehicles. As a tucktuck stopped right next to their car, Sherlock stared at the driver until Mycroft forcefully turned his head away. He protested but their new warder had taken refuge in the front of the car ignoring any argument from the backseat. The anger subsided quickly however as they passed a market, a cow lounging on the sidewalk and left town, the street growing more and more rural.

“What, courage leaving you now, pirate?” Mycroft mocked as Sherlock’s steps slowed down when they approached the elephants behind the fence.

“No?” Sherlock protested, taking his brother’s hand nevertheless who helped him climb onto the steps in front of the barrier. The grounds below were dusty merging into a stony area at the end of which a river began.

“Happy now?” Mycroft muttered, keeping a securing hand on his brother’s collar. Sherlock wouldn’t answer. He watched as the grey giants moved about slowly, throwing dust on their back and swinging their ears back and forth. One of the animals turned and seemed to look directly at him. Sherlock carefully reached his hand over the fence, trying to tempt it to come closer. It was an elderly one, spots on its skin giving the animal’s age away. One of the elephants took pity in him and slowly made its way towards them, snuffling as its trunk searched the floor and raised the yellow dust.

“351 bones.” Sherlock whispered.

“4,5 kilogram of brain.” Mycroft answered, securing Sherlock by locking an arm around his waist as the animal came closer, still searching the ground for remains of food.

“12 kilogram of heart.” Sherlock added, reaching out further over the fence.

Mycroft sighed as he heard their chaperone calling out for them. They had managed to outdistance her shortly after passing the entrance as she was paying for their tickets. He unfastened his grip on his brother and reached into his pocket. Sherlock could feel the muscles move behind him. His brother had changed a lot lately. His chubbiness, Sherlock had often used as a weapon in their little fights for superiority - slowly disappeared, his limbs had become wiry. Mycroft took his hand and placed a couple of peanuts into its palm before guiding it back towards the elephant. The trunk felt tickly and warm as it felt round for the nuts.

“36,5 degrees body temperature.” Sherlock giggled as he felt the respiration on his hand.

“40.000 individual muscles in the trunk.” Mycroft added, refilling his hand with another serving of nuts.

“There you are!” She was out of breath and leaned on her own knees to catch it.

“Even it notices.” Mycroft whispered with a smirk as the elephant grabbed the remaining nuts and retreated towards the river. Sherlock grinned at him and took his hand before they slowly began to walk again.


	5. The Temptations of Boredom - Sherlock

“Did you enjoy your trip?” his father asked, trying to comb through his curls.

“Ya. Can we go again?”

His father laughed out loud, shaking his hand in disbelief. “Next thing you will ask me if we can have one as a pet.”

“It wouldn’t like the winter, I think.” Sherlock answered gravely before he took the brush from his father who always managed to tangle them more than before.

“Julia will need to be at the office tomorrow, do you think you and Mycroft can manage alone till the afternoon?”

“Ya.” He took his toothbrush then thought again and took Mycroft’s.

The morning was sultrier than any they had experienced so far. Mycroft curled into one tight ball on his bed with an icepack over his eyes as soon as he had eaten breakfast. Any attempts to catch his attention from Sherlock’s side were commented on only with an impatient wave of his hand as if he was shooing away a fly. With the living room occupied first by a housekeeper, painting her nails while talking on the phone and then Julia making use of the TV, he found himself escaping towards the garden from her guilt ridden attempts to spark up what she thought was age appropriate conversation. Sherlock pitied her because he would have liked to make her feel more welcome by offering information about his favourite TV show or his favourite sports. The problem was he didn’t watch TV because it made him sleepy and he certainly detested any sport that involved other people. So he allowed her to offer him some sweets to buy his affection, swallowing the hint that he was allowed as much of the stuff as he wanted because all but Mycroft had given up any attempts to bring a healthy structure into his diet long ago. So he had taken several of the biscuits and then disappeared into the green thicket of the garden.

Outside it seemed never quiet. There were constant noises he didn’t know the source of. The shrubbery became denser the closer he got to the white wall around the plot of land. He began bending the branches away to crawl over them. His feet got tangled and he slipped, eventually falling over. The earth - soaked from the gardener’s attempts to water only those plants that were supposed to grow here – gave a smacking sound as his elbows sunk into the dirt. He cursed just because it felt forbidden and knew no one would catch him here. From his new perspective he suddenly saw it, the glittering body of a snake. Sherlock held his breath. The white, pearly body wound its way through the brown mess of dirt and dead leaves. It looked like one of his mother’s necklaces that he sometimes borrowed from her vanity when he needed a decent pirate treasure. His fingers twitched, he badly wanted to feel the texture of the animal’s skin. Before he was able to shift his weight enough to reach out, the tail disappeared between the branches of a bush with enormous pink flowers. Freeing his legs, he tried to follow, crawling further into the net of leaves and flowers. It had vanished completely. He straightened himself up in frustration, feeling pins and needles in his arms. He cursed again, parting the shrubbery with both hands to search the ground beneath, in vain. Instead he uncovered a path of overgrown tiles made from the same rock as the garden wall. With his feet, he broadened the gap he had produced in the mat of plants. The path went on continuously towards a group of larger trees, bent and was interrupted by the wall. The structure of the bricks showed clearly that some sort of gate had been closed. Sherlock followed the wall, trampling down much of the plants in front of him. There was another gate, a footpath now clearly visible coming from the opposite direction. The wooden gate was locked but open-worked and allowed to see what lay beyond. There was a shed to the right, the rest looked very much like the rest of the garden. Reaching his hand through one of the openings, Sherlock tried to feel for a lock on the other side. The door however, stayed closed.

“What?” Mycroft hissed at his brother’s face towering over him when he opened his eyes.

“Dad said we can play in the garden, right?”

“Mischief. I can smell it! Why are you...mud...you're filthy!” he was irritable and not up for Sherlock’s games.

Sherlock shrugged. “No. Just trying to verify my understanding of the rules.”

Mycroft propped himself up, studying the younger one’s face with intent. “You are not leaving the garden as defined in ‘the area surrounded by the wall’, is that understood?”

The smile opposite broadened alarmingly. “Yes, understood.”

“Good.” Mycroft answered with vigour, already knowing nothing was good at all.


	6. In Hiding - Sherlock

It took him half an hour to locate a ladder, another half to drag the thing all the way to the gate. He leaned it so he could, once he had reached the top of the wall, get hold of the branches of a tree on the other side should he like what he saw on the other side enough to make the effort to climb down. He broke into sweat as he drew himself up to the top of the wall. The view from above disclosed the dimensions of that second part of the garden. The middle of the square-cut piece of land was dominated by a fountain that fell down three cascades with the most delicate sound of trickle. The rest was a similar mess to that on his side. Green of all shades, trees growing into each other, entwined as if holding hands. The same enormous pink flowers on bushes.

“Sherlock?”

“Coming!” He groaned as he heard his father call for him from the house. Several trees were blocking the sight between him and the house. He slipped down the ladder and dragged it behind a nearby row of hedges, checking that it was invisible from afar as he marched towards the house.

“So, what did you do out there? Found something to keep you amused?” His father asked, smiling over the rim of his glasses at dinner table.

Sherlock pushed food around on his table, the fork scratching on the porcelain in a way that made Mycroft’s left eye twitch. “I saw a snake.”

“Really?” His father lay down his fork and held his head in his hands.

“Yes, it was white and looked like pearls.”

“Ah. I have never heard of an animal like that. Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I saw it.” The frown on his father’s forehead annoyed him endlessly. “It was this long and sort of…shiny.” He added quietly, turning back to his plate.

“Oh Sherli.” Bernhard looked at him with a strange smile on his face.

At night he watched the stars from the edge of his enormous bed. Mycroft had removed the blanket and replaced it with a thin sheet that felt soothingly cold on his skin. Still he found no sleep, the ladder in her hiding-place would not leave his mind. The thought made him turn impatiently, he tossed towards the other side with a heavy sigh before giving in and slipping out of the room. It was dark, darker than he had ever thought possible. The edge of the terrace was an invisible border, he lowered himself just on the edge, hovering his feet just above the ground. A white snake should be easy to spot when everything else is black he thought touching the surface below with one toe. He shied back when he heard a sound from somewhere on the other side of the house. It was his father’s voice, laughing silently, then shushing someone else who had also begun to laugh. It was the woman he had met at the garden party, he remembered her strangely smelling breath. Their steps came closer, he heard her heels on the tiles of the path so he scrambled to get inside and closed the glass door behind himself with a violently beating heart. Mycroft didn’t even protest when he slipped into his room and occupied the half of the bed closer to the door. His brother had not been sleeping anyway and so he just turned to inspect him closely with his pale eyes that seemed to glow in the dark and pierced him onto the pillow. Sherlock slumped down on the pillow, rubbing his curls into it.

“You’re crying?” Mycroft’s breathing was ragged.

“No, Sherli. Why would I?”

Sherlock placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder anyhow, rubbing it with his thumb.

“There was a snake, I saw it.” he whispered, increasing the pressure on his brother’s arm.

Mycroft covered his hand with his, slightly pressing it. “Sometimes ones sees only what one wants to see. That doesn’t make it real.”

“Just because I saw it and wanted to see it doesn’t make it unreal either.” Sherlock muttered, freeing his hand.

“It’s a talent of sorts, I guess. Making yourself believe in what you want to be true.”

“You don’t believe me either then?” Sherlock accusingly asked into the dark silence of the room.

“I believe you saw it.” Mycroft whispered soothingly and pulled him a little closer so his head was resting on the same pillow. He placed his chin on the top of the sweaty curls, his irregular breathing slowly evening out. When there were steps passing the door outside in the hall, he eventually pulled him towards his stomach, curling both hands around Sherlock’s middle. Sherlock didn’t protest and kept calm, feeling a strange mood seeping from Mycroft all the way into his spine.


	7. The Fortune Teller - Sherlock

Julia was released of her duty on them some time during the week as their father seemed to be there more frequently. Sherlock felt something like regret as his frequent ventures to the other side of the garden wall were now under threat. Indeed, it had become his single entertainment during most of the day, spending the hottest hours exploring the seemingly eternal depth of the jungle around them. He had no clear idea of how much Mycroft or his father gathered of his doings but neither stopped him when he stooped open the door as soon as he was relieved of the duty of having breakfast. The little box of treasure he kept on his nightstand was filling up steadily as he found colourful beetles, the skull of a snake and a wide array of oddly shaped stones on his strolls through the undergrowth. It turned out the first compartment he had found was only the beginning of a labyrinth of gardens, a second following on the other side but less interesting as it was a shadeless patch of dust used to grow vegetables. It took him a while till he finally touched the wall at the other end of that first compartment discovered. Three hours of collecting stones of different sizes that he would pile onto one another till he had produced a small hill gave him a chance to peek above this new boundary. The sight as he stepped onto it soon revealed that he had reached the next neighbour’s plot with another house clearly visible. He sat for a while on the top of his self-produced mountain with the proud feeling of an explorer having come to see what no one before had seen. When the sun began to set he ventured home on his now well trodden route with an air of accomplishment.

At night, watching the stars he realized that his discovery also meant the end of his adventure and he almost sobbed at the thought of it.

“Not going out today?” Mycroft smirked of the edge of his book at him and he answered with a dirty look.

“I might.” He muttered stubbornly as Mycroft laughed at him. But in the end he spent the day at the window, going through his findings in the small chest.

“There is a little sort of festival going on down the street tonight.” Their father sounded unsure, giving Mycroft a sideward glance as his son kept staring at his book, unimpressed.

“Will there be elephants?”

“No.” Bernhard sighed, “But maybe a magician and some shadow theatre.”

“Alright. At least it means getting out without the sun burning the skin off my face.” Mycroft muttered, slamming the book shut with the usual force.

The street was lined with rows of lanterns, already crowded with people and families going into the same direction. Sherlock was pulling at his father’s hand to make him walk faster. Mycroft soon fell behind, taking a closer look at a display of sweets in the wildest colours. There was already a small crowd gathered in a half circle when they reached the end of the street, music was playing from a set of rather old speakers over the low humming of the audience talking. Bernhard pushed him to the front of the gathered group so he could see the small stage and he squatted down paying the other children around him not another thought. He understood only little of the story that was performed without words, the figures moving as shadows too foreign to give him any idea of the plot. Still he was captivated, getting lost in his own speculations of what was going on on the improvised screen in front of him. When the music stopped and the lights behind the white sheet were turned out, he felt his knees. The audience was slowly disassociating, he looked around for his father and found him a little further off, in conversation with a group of other men. Having located him, he cleaned his knees and strolled off to look at the other excitements on display. The vendor at a booth selling all sort of jewellery and trinkets smiled at him as he ran his fingers along the goods on the small, wonky table.

“Looking for something in particular?” the man winked at him and Sherlock blushed as he couldn’t stop his eyes wandering towards a richly decorated dagger in between the other, glittering clutter.

“Ah, a wise choice, young man.” The man smiled.

“Dad?” he called, running towards the place he had last seen him. The square was almost empty, only a few people were busy with demounting the stage and stacking up the few benches. Sherlock groaned and hurried the other way towards the booth he had seen Mycroft last. The crowd was getting thicker and he bumped into several other people who gave him curious or annoyed looks.

“Dad?” he called louder, now growing hectic as people began staring at him. He turned around himself, looking for any clue where he was until he felt a hand grabbing his from behind, pulling him into a gap between two booths.

“If there is a chance to get in trouble, you have to take it, don’t you?” Mycroft took him by the shoulders and looked into his eyes.

“I…”

Mycroft sighed, pressing his shoulders painfully. “Come on.” His brother took his hand and led him into the direction he had come from.

They found Bernhard not far from where Sherlock had left him, still deeply in conversation with a growing group of people. He gave his sons a small wave and a smile and so Mycroft turned on his heels and let Sherlock pull him to wherever his urging curiosity led them.

“What’s she doing?” They had stopped in front of a woman that was sitting in a corner, her face more or less hidden by a veil falling into her face. On her arms a numberless amount of bracelets tingled whenever she moved. She kept her voice low as she talked to a woman in front of her whose hand she held in both of hers.

“She is telling that woman what she wants to hear and gets paid for it.”

Sherlock looked up at him with a confused frown in place. Mycroft supressed a grin.

“She’s a fortune teller.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not for real.”

“I know that.” Sherlock sniffed, pulling to get closer anyhow. The woman’s customer paid with several bills and turned to leave. The veiled face turned towards them and she fixed her eyes on Mycroft’s face who stared back with an unmoved expression.

“You doubt me.” she said in a matter of fact fashion. Her hands moved and sent a melodious tingle towards them.

“Not very hard a deduction to make.” Mycroft answered in the same fashion, fighting against Sherlock who relentlessly tried to pull him towards her. She smiled, looking directly into his eyes.

“Can I try?” Sherlock whined.

“It’s a trick, Sherli.”

“Try me.” the woman added quietly, her eyes still following Mycroft’s who tried to break away. Sherlock didn’t dare to breathe. He had once entered a stare-off competition with Mycroft and had no intention of repeating the experience. There was something unnerving about having Mycroft’s full attention resting on you.

“You don’t really ask me to show you my hand?” he huffed, clasping them both around Sherlock’s sweaty fingers resting in his palm.

She kept her smile, her rather bad teeth showing as she stepped a little closer.

“You are a strong-willed young man. Always in the lead and in control. Decisive. Resourceful when it comes to getting your will obeyed.”

Mycroft laughed, shaking his head towards the ground.

“And still there is something grave about you. Your mind is growing faster than your soul. You are scared, very scared of failing the others and most of all yourself.”

Sherlock looked up at him as the last sentence made him face her again. “Are you?” he whispered but received no answer other than a tightening grip around his hand.

“You have no reason.” She added, holding the stare.

“You have no idea. No idea at all.” Mycroft pressed through clenched teeth “Come on, Sherl, leaving.” Mycroft turned to leave but Sherlock stayed behind.

“What about me?” Sherlock filled the sudden silence.

“What about you, young man?” she asked back, slightly leaning down towards him.

“Will I be a pirate someday?”

“You will do what you love most. Your passion will make you the best at what you do but watch your step, that is a mixed blessing.”

Sherlock broke into a wide grin, hiding both his fists in his pockets with excitement.

“Take care of your brother, young man, there will be a time that he needs you.” She added before turning and slowly walking away. Remembering what had happened before, Sherlock rushed to close up with Mycroft, grabbing his hand once more.


	8. The Ape - Sherlock

The voices were lowered as he approached the kitchen door in the morning. Mycroft’s only barely audible over a never ceasing stream of hushed words from their father. He grabbed the handle and opened it noisily. As his father caught sight of him, he smiled with a lot of teeth before turning towards the counter. Mycroft slammed his left hand onto the table before turning away and leaving without a word. It didn’t unsettle him, enough to forget about the reason he had come here and so he grabbed the sugar bowl and a packet of cereal, dumping the one into the other unceremoniously, then shook it to mix it up. The bowls were high up but his father handed him one down without noticing what Sherlock filled it with, even unscrewing the bottle of soda for him that he poured over it, he was too occupied with something invisible on the porch. The fizz made the liquid spill over the rim of the bowl and Sherlock lowered his head to slurp off enough to stop the sweet flood reaching the kitchen floor. The sugar hit his blood instantly. Last night Mycroft had barricaded himself in his room and Bernhard had been on the phone for a long time, pacing the terrace up and down with rigid movements. So Sherlock had feasted on a packet of cheese and chocolate cookies that he covered in spray whipped cream. That brought an idea to his mind and he reached for the aerosol can again, topping his lemonade cereal with a nice coat of white sweetness.

“Don’t your teeth rot already?” Bernhard asked in a tense voice, he had finally turned to face him. Sherlock shrugged and slipped out of the room quickly, carrying his prey towards the TV.

The shows all held his interest only for a very limited time. Once the pattern on the ground of the bowl became visible again, he had switched through all the channels twice. Abandoning the bowl on the carpet, he decided to find his amusement somewhere else.

Mycroft’s room wasn’t locked. He marched in and jumped onto the mattress next to his brother, one of the books he had abandoned on the empty side jumped off.

“Sorry.” Sherlock muttered, diving after it as it clanked on the floor. “What are you reading?” He snaked his way under Mycroft’s arm and rested his head on his brother’s chest so he could see the pages of the book he was holding as well. Recognizing the words, he groaned.

“Hamlet? Again? Don’t you know it by heart already?”

The chest below him moved, shallowly. The shirt was faintly damp with sweat. He recognized the smell though it had changed slightly since Mycroft had returned from school for the Easter break, after shave, his mother had whispered, with a badly hidden smirk.

“It’s a play, one is meant to memorize it.” A hand brushed over the edges of his mouth to remove unidentified remains of breakfast before it turned the page.

“Vitamins. Ever heard of it?” Mycroft sighed, he shifted the book to free one of his hands which he ran through his brother’s mob of curls.

“Maybe for dinner.” He shifted once more, a sudden urge for a cuddle gripping hold of him.

“Your father is lucky youth welfare is unlikely to check up on your upbringing. The way your hair smell and the things you eat an allegation for neglect isn’t far off.”

“Did you fight?”

Mycroft sighed and shifted once more, breaking the close embrace between them. The patches of sun that fell through the windows began to grow, midday was approaching quickly.

“How did she do it?”

“It’s a trick, Sherli. Anyone can do that. She just covers it up with all that hokus pokus and charges people for it.”

“Can you do it?”

Mycroft snorted, reading on. As Sherlock began poking his stomach with his index finger, he eventually closed the book and grabbed the tiny wrist.

“I call it deductions. It’s simple. You pay attention to what people look like and what they do and then you can combine that to find out what they are thinking about or what their habits are.” He spoke mechanically.

“Can you show me? Please?” he put on his best whining just for good measure and it didn’t fail to have the usual effect. Mycroft rolled his eyes but sat up against the headboard. “Listen up then.” He finally said, folding his hands underneath his chin. Sherlock grinned and moved directly opposite of him, folding his hands in the same manner.

 

It needed no words for them both to grab their shoes as soon as the door closed behind Bernhard. They roamed the street of the quarter aimlessly in search of practice objects, soon moving on to the main road which offered a wider array of victims. Sometimes Sherlock would look onto the offers of street venders wantonly and sometimes Mycroft gave in, filling his pockets with the most colourful array of sweets. And though he complained from time to time about Sherlock’s slow progress, Sherlock revelled in the occasion when he nodded satisfied at Sherlock’s answers and wordlessly pointed out their next object of inspection. At night Bernhard now often found them stretched out on the couch when he returned home, Mycroft not looking up from his book and his other son often fast asleep with his head in his brother’s lap.

“I know something you don’t know, too, you know.” There was glee in his eyes. They were waiting out the most hottest of hours in the living room before making for the street again. Sherlock was balancing a chair on just one of its legs with the tip of his index finger against the wall to keep the balance of both him and the chair.

“Do you?” Mycroft answered from under a book he kept over his face so he didn’t have to see the moment when this battle with the forces of gravity would come to its inevitable end.

“Yep.”

“And now you want me to ask you what that is?” he grinned to himself as he could almost fell the youngers disappointment. “Well, go ahead then, amuse me.”

“It’s outside.”

“Well bad luck because I’m not moving.”

“You are such a lazy…”

Sherlock was interrupted by the door to the room being opened. Julia’s face was appearing in the gap with a broad smile. “Hello boys. I wondered if you would like to…”

“No. Sorry, we were just about to leave. Come on.” Mycroft had straightened up and jumped from the couch in just one swift movement, now grabbing Sherlock by the shoulder and lifting him off his chair experiment.

“Oh, well. Where are you…”

“I have no idea, Sherlock apparently has to show me something really important outside in the garden.”

“But you said…”

“That this is of real urgency and great importance to me, yes Sherlock, I know what I just said.” He pushed him through the door and closed it behind them with a loud clank.

“Shoes.” Sherlock turned around and ran back, passing a puzzled nanny still standing in the same place. “Sorry, pressing engagement.” he threw at her, a sentence he had hoped to have an opportunity to use for quite some time.

“You don’t like Julia, do you?” Sherlock huffed as they pulled the ladder from the place he had left it the last time. Already the plants had begun to devour it, holding on to it with their branches.

“Do you?” Mycroft asked at the device came free suddenly and made the slither a bit on the trampled down green around.

“I don’t care. She isn’t worse than anyone else we had.”

There was no reply but he noticed Mycroft’s neck to redden just above the collar of his shirt.

The progress was slower than when he been on his own. Mycroft seemed in no hurry at all to climb over walls and into trees and ignored the younger ones giddy impatience.

“So this is where you disappeared to all the time?” Mycroft asked as they finally settled in the shades of a huge mango tree. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and wiped his forehead with a cloth tissue from his pocket.

“Yes! I found it when I was following that snake. Isn’t it brilliant?”

Mycroft smiled and rested his head against the stem, closing his eyes. “The snake, I remember.”

The air was thick with humid vapours of some sweet smells. Sherlock rested himself against Mycroft’s side and stared into the green roof above him. Sometimes birds appeared in between the leaves, lurking down at them with quickly twisting heads. He listened to Mycroft’s breathing that was shallow and troubled, the heat blocking it more than ever.

“And what is there on the other side of this plot?” he spoke without opening his eyes.

“Not much. The neighbour’s garden.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.” Sherlock rolled his eyes at the implied accusation. A sudden swift of wind went through the plants around, the brown, dying ones rattling between their fresher counterparts. Sherlock blinked as suddenly rays of lights found their way through the thicket towards them. Something moved, other than the wind. He straightened up and tried to focus. A paw. A blond, furry paw reached for one of the fruits, feeled it and pulled it towards the invisible body of the animal.

“Myc. Look.” Sherlock grabbed his shoulder and tried to shake him from his slumber. The older one slowly looked up and tried to follow his finger with his eyes.

“A monkey.”

Mycroft was about to protest when the animal peeled form the green and hurried along a branch. It muscular legs flexed at it reached the end and holding on to the orange fruit, it leapt up flying into the air towards the next tree. Sherlock followed it his mouth gaping open, the fingers digging into his brother’s arm. The long tail seemed to wave at him as the monkey landed in the next crown, the light body disappeared quickly.

“Where are you going?” Mycroft shouted after him when Sherlock jumped to his feet and ran off in the same direction already breathless from excitement.

“Sherlock!” he caught up with him when the ape was about to cross the border between their plot and the neighbour’s. Sherlock scrambled to mount the hill of stones he once had established, furiously trying to pull himself up on top of the dividing wall. He managed fighting off his brother’s hands who tried to stop him. It seemed gravity saw its chance to get back to him for the previous defeat, he tumbled as he pulled up his knee to rest on the narrow plain of the wall, a curse from Mycroft following on his fall towards the ground on the other side. He blinked twice before Mycroft’s face appeared above his.

“Are you alright?” Hands searched his limbs, felt his skull underneath the hair. “You idiot.” Mycroft hissed when he found no injuries and pulled him onto his feet.

“It went that way.”

“And how are we to get back, brother mine?” Mycroft moaned, forceful turning him towards the wall. Without the pile of stones it was too high for both of them to pull up onto it.

“Find a door somewhere?” Sherlock answered feebly in a shortlived attack of guilt.

“Brilliant. Just brilliant.” Mycroft cleaned his knees and began marching into the foreign territory.


	9. A Monkey in a Cave - Sherlock

The plot was bigger than they had assumed at first. Whenever they turned around a group of trees or a flowerbed, a new plain of green opened in front of them. Soon Mycroft slowed down, pausing to catch his breath. His speed slowed down. “Let’s just go towards the house and explain.” Only parts of the roof were visible in the distance. Sherlock didn’t reply, he had begun scanning the trees again.

“Sherlock!”

“It can’t just have disappeared.” He kept going from tree to tree until he let out an enthusiastic yelp. Mycroft saw the tail quickly disappearing between the leaves again. “Sherlock!” he yelled again but his brother had started to run, chasing the fleeing animal.

The monkey was fast and kept moving, most of the time Sherlock followed the sound of breaking branches more than the actual sight of the animal. He didn’t notice he was falling at first, only when his feet landed in the water of a small stream, his mind caught up with what was happening. As he fell on his palms he cursed, pebble pressing painfully into his flesh. The stream was artificial. It was shallow and disappeared into some kind of grotto overgrown and mossy. The monkey was sitting on a stone, watching him carefully. Sherlock wiped his face and slithered closer over the moving stones below his feet. It had brown, almost golden, glowing eyes. As he moved, so did the ape, keeping the distance the same as it disappeared into the twilight of the grotto.

“Stay.” He whispered, feeling his way into the darkness. Water was running down the walls, droplets catching in his hair and running down his nose. Then there was the moment when he saw nothing any more, surrounded completely by darkness. Then there was an almost hysterical scream, a screeching sound, he felt something touching his shoulder and stumbled, reaching for something to give him balance with his hands behind himself. But his fingers lost grip and he fell, his elbow crashing into some stone, then his head, his eyes growing heavy, his mouth filled with blood and water. The next thing he remembered was Mycroft’s ragged breathing as he carried him towards the house. The sun was stinging in his eyes and so he turned his head into his brother’s shirt on which a red stain was slowly spreading.

His father tested the temperature with the back of his hand as if to verify the doctor’s verdict who was in the other corner slowly packing his bag again. He smiled at Sherlock who felt too weak to react, his head heavy with fever and pain on the white pillow. Mycroft was leaning against the doorframe in the other corner, both arms stiffly crossed over his chest. He didn’t need his brother to deduce he was tense. Julia was running in and out of the room with pillows and bottles of water, a mug of herbal tea she didn’t know where to put down. Mycroft finally sighed and took the mug from her, placing it on the desk next to him. She looked at Bernhard but he ignored her, not taking his eyes of the slim figure of his younger one in the bed. Finally the doctor cleared his throat and Bernhard nodded without looking at him before both he and Mycroft followed him downstairs. Julia returned and covered the bedside lamp with one of her silk scarfs. Sherlock thought about protesting for a moment that it would be impossible for him to read with so little light but then he noticed that his eyes had closed without his permission and drifted off almost instantly. The mattress next to him dipped several times during the night, both Mycroft and Bernhard sitting down next to him for a while several times during the night.

“He is pale, he is going to be sick.” he heard his brother whisper and Bernhard answered with a slightly disbelieving sound. Sherlock turned his throbbing head and began to retch and gag just to prove his brother right. Bernhard jumped up to get a bucket but it was too late, Sherlock threw up brown water from the river, it was running from his mouth and nose over Mycroft’s bare feet.

 

“Where’s Mycroft?”

“Asleep.” Bernhard murmured, holding a glass of water to his son’s lips.

“Why are you here?” Sherlock spoke into the glass.

“I’m not working today, Sherli.” Sherlock would have nodded but his head didn’t seem to follow his command any more. “Is there something I can do?”

“Mycroft must tell a story.” Sherlock whined as another blizzard of pain went through his head.

“Do you have a book you would like to hear from or just any story.” His father’s voice sounded strange, he frowned as he tried to analyse as Mycroft had showed him. His best reading came to the conclusion of sadness. He dismissed the thought, settling on his father being tired.

“You have to ask for words first.” Sherlock groaned at having to explain the rules. He felt another fit of retching approach.

“What kind of words?” he asked, moving the bowl into Sherlock’s reach.

“I give you three words and you turn them into a story.”

“What if I can’t?”

Sherlock didn’t know. It had never happened. “Space ship, monkey, pirate-elephant.”

“That’s four.” Bernhard muttered.

“No. An elephant that is a pirate.”

“Right. Let me think.”

The story was a good one, Sherlock giggled when the monkey stole the space ship. Bernhard caught on, joining him with some sort of surprised laughter. Sherlock slid back into sleep somewhere in the middle and only half registered his father leaving.


	10. Monsoon - Sherlock

The next time Sherlock woke from a feverish dream, he found himself of in the company of his brother once more. He had opened the door to the dark wooded balcony, looking out into the distance with both hands buried in the pockets of his trousers.  
“It’s coming.” Mycroft whispered without turning to meet his gaze.  
“What?” Sherlock asked, his voice hoarse with disuse. He wanted to crawl up higher but his head refused to leave the pillow. He groaned as he gave up the effort.  
“Monsoon. It’s going to rain soon. Look.” Strong arms once more surrounded him and placed his head carefully against Mycroft’s chest. He listened to the heartbeat below, felt the pulse going through the veins where his nose pressed against his brother’s throat. He sensed immediately that something had changed as he was carried outside. The air was humid and colder and so was the light. Instead of the bright orange that had previously filtered through his eyelids when closing them against the sunshine the sparks dancing in his vision were now more of a blue and green. The distant roar of thunder made him blink. The sky, before an endless canvas of indefinite blue was now covered in layers of clouds of different kinds of white, piling higher and higher towards the horizon. Rays of light filtered through them and shed spotlights on the green and dusty earth below waiting for the inevitable with held breath.  
“Soon.” Mycroft whispered, the wicker chair below them protested against their combined weight being lowered into it.  
“How long?”  
“Months.” Mycroft answered quickly, sounding relieved.  
Another thunder rolled through the sky and Sherlock thought of Phaeton, storming through the sky in his father’s carriage, losing control eventually and then falling to drown in a stream below. First drops fell and echoed loudly when they touched the still heated tin of the balcony’s roof. As if it had been the signal, birds woke and began to sing, becoming louder and louder, their unfamiliar song sending a chill down Sherlock’s spine. Soon the street below also awoke once more, people stepping outside with happy chatter, waiting for the rain to commence. Then the skies opened and water began to fall in streams, freeing a short laugh from Mycroft’s heaving chest.  
“You like the rain.” Sherlock stated flatly as he ignored the piercing pain of his head when he rearranged to see the gathering crowd below.  
“Yes. Cold air is easier to breathe.” He helped him shift in his lap and Sherlock caught sight of other children chasing each other through the quickly filling pools in the street below. “Finally.” Mycroft added to himself. The stale smell of water brought back memories of the cave he thought about the monkey and wondered if it welcomed the downpour or would crouch into the branches of a tree waiting for it to end. They watched and listened in silence to the excitement below.  
“When can I go down again?” Sherlock eventually asked in a small voice, waiting for a shower of scolding being poured over him. Mycroft’s arms tightened slightly around him, his eyes fixed on the top of a mountain in the distance that now pierced a thick layer of white and grey fog.  
“I thought I had lost you, Sherlock.” He could feel Mycroft swallow twice, his temple resting at his throat. He listened for any further explanation but none was to follow.  
“It is you who is gone all the time.” He whispered in a fit of sudden opposition, feeling the heart below the shirt speed up a little as he said it. 

When the doctor finally announced his abandonment in bed to be ended, their father announced it time for a celebration. Julia covered them in a whirlwind of excited chatter as she produced ice cream and cakes form the depths of their fridge and even Mycroft seemed to bear it with relaxed countenance.  
“You think I could leave her with you for a day or two? Myc asked to come to the office with me for a few hours. I think we bore him.” His father whispered in conspiratorial voice to him over another bowl of ice cream and fruits. Sherlock gave his brother a look as he faced away from him, studying the ice-cream container’s label.  
“Sure.” He voiced tonelessly and ignored his father’s grateful tossle of his hair.  
When his mother called he was asked into the study and his father handed him the speaker, lingering on as she tried to strike up a conversation with their younger one. It was difficult with Sherlock’s replies being monosyllabic, he played with the cord of the phone listening to her strange voice without a body, and suddenly he was keenly aware of her absence and felt homesickness tighten his throat. Finally Bernhard took pity on them both and asked for the speaker back and Sherlock slipped from the room quietly to find a corner in his bed to hide.  
Their final days were a blur of boredom to him, he wasn’t allowed outside any more, the rain making it a meek prospect anyway. Mycroft now returned in the evenings with their father, trying his best to make up for the lost time during the day but Sherlock already felt the pain of their soon to come parting lingering at the corner of his mind and fell into agonizing fits of sulk and boredom. He thought of Lotty, a girl at school who sometimes sat with him during the break when nobody was around to see it. She had four brothers and hated each one of them she said, they were noisy and filthy and cruel. Sherlock had listened to her stories with delicious horror and they had agreed that a brother like Mycroft who was only there ever so often surely was the safer choice. He had gone to visit her once, she lived at the other side of the village in a flat and she shared a stuffy room with her youngest brother who threw toys at them as they tried to have a proper tea party on the fluffy pink rug in front of their bunk bed. Their mother had said that he should be nice to her because she was one of those children that didn’t pay for the school themselves and could only stay as long as they didn’t mess up any of the class tests. Sherlock didn’t understand why that made it mandatory to like her but apparently it did because the teacher said the same thing and he noted the fact down as one of those that were puzzling but apparently well accepted among grown-ups.  
“What’s on your mind, brother mine?” He hadn’t heard Mycroft approach, now his face was hovering over him with that joyful grin. Lying on the couch he stretched so he could kick him but Mycroft caught his leg and pulled and he landed on the floor.  
“What was that for?” Mycroft huffed as he let go of his foot. Sherlock didn’t reply but the change in Mycroft’s expression as he stared his best death-stare at him showed that he understood. So the distance widened between them day by day until it was time for them to make their way back home.  
Despite it Sherlock hung around as Mycroft refilled the enormous bag with school uniforms and books. The garden outside lay in the foggy silence of an English early morning. They didn’t speak, it was a silent ceremony well practiced, Mycroft pointing to parts of his belongings and Sherlock fetching them, some being handed back and therefore making their transition into his ownership. As the zip went round the top of the bag, Mycroft sighed and reached for something on his nightstand.  
“Here.” He muttered, avoiding Sherlock’s eyes as he handed him a small wooden box.  
“What’s that?”  
“Open.”  
It was padded inside, it took a while till he managed to pull out the frame that was inside. Butterflies. Their wings were immaculate and sparkled in the light, looking closely you could even see the hairs on their slender bodies.  
“Looked for the snake but I couldn’t find it.” Mycroft spoke to his dresser, his hands somehow always in the way.  
“Ta.”  
“Welcome.” He cleared his throat as the brothers stared at each other over the bag between them.  
“Next year, you’ll come with me, right?” Mycroft tried a fake grin, his hands still looking for something to occupy them.  
“Hmm.”  
The car came, they stood on the steps as it pulled off, Sherlock waited for it to go around the bend before he started running, trying to keep it in sight as long as he could. The distance was necessary so his brother couldn’t see him doing so, because how embarrassing would that be he thought as his knees gave in near the neighbour’s field. He sat on a piece of rock near the fence. And so the waiting began once more.


	11. Waiting II - Mycroft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the second part of the story, basically going over the same events but from Mycrofts perspective. So if you are bored already, maybe this is the time to stop. :)

He was hesitant to part this time. Mycroft flipped through the pile of papers on his desk and thought of the things he would have to put off until after his three week holiday. Preparation for the final round of the debating club. Rehearsal for the school play. His fight with Laurence. Or maybe it was good to get away from that one; their discussion of such existential questions as to who was the most pointless poet of all in history had come to a dead end and had taken a sort of personal turn. Now they just ignored each other, and all just because of bloody Byron. Mycroft sighed and rubbed his face. Laurence on the bed opposite huffed, finally acknowledging his presence by looking up from the offending compendium of poetry.  
“Uh, you pretend to not like going on holiday again. You’re such a pretentious twat.” He spit at him and Mycroft groaned in response.   
“If I was you should be worshipping me since you seem to have a liking for those.” He hissed back, pointing at the book over his shoulder.   
“How does your family even stand you for more than two hours? They probably send you over there to get rid of you.”  
He got out of his chair at that, the accusation hitting too close to home. He had promised to check up on Terry anyway before being picked up. He strolled through the yard towards the other building and flew up the stairs, two at a time. The door was half open, he was expected.  
“So we meet again.” Terry grinned from his chair by the fireplace, both feet resting on the small coffee table.   
“I’m hiding. Laurence has another, existential crisis.”  
Terry laughed out loud and jumped out of his chair, towards the book rack. He took a book from it which said Treasure Island, turned it over and opened the secret compartment hidden inside. Mycroft gave him a grateful smile and produced a lighter from his pocket, opening the window and locking the door behind them. Terry was never short of cigarettes, his father had a more liberal opinion on things like these. Probably because he had sat in the very same place many years ago, trying not to get caught.  
“Hate him. I really do.” Mycroft pressed through his teeth between to puffs of smoke.  
“No you don’t.” Terry sighed, leaning his head back against the frame of the window with the pleasure of smoke.   
“Nah, you’re right, I hate people, life in general.”  
“Who is now the one with existential crisis?”   
Mycroft grinned in response, flipping the stub of the cigarette out of the window into the garden below. They made sure the gardener never reported how many of those he found when tending to the flowerbeds. Mycroft was sure their contribution to his monthly income was a major one.  
“Why isn’t your mum going with him? Mine is always nagging the old man to take her on trips with him.”  
“I’ll find time to work on the script for the play. We’ll still finfish in time.”  
“That’s not what I’m worried about. Just don’t see why I should share you with your brother during term. She had that bloody curse of a human being, why can’t she look after him then?“  
Mycroft laughed, a strange warm feeling spreading in his stomach upon Terry’s possessive streak . “My brother is one of those horrible attempts to save a marriage that is beyond help. I think they got bored or they thought maybe it would turn out better the second time round.”  
“Bad luck with that little prat.” Terry now fired the remains of the cigarette out of the open window as well.  
“Not his fault, though.” Mycroft muttered, tracing the lines in the wood of the frame with his fingers.  
“Well, I hope you will be aware that I shall miss you horribly. At least make sure you have some adventures to share when you come back. I will be suffering of ennui the entire time with that horrible aunt of mine.“  
“And that absolutely not so horrible cousin of yours.”  
“Well, she usually prefers my sister’s company over mine, though I don’t see why.”  
“Maybe because she doesn’t try to shag her all the time?” Mycroft grinned, getting ready to leave.  
“Well, she, like you, doesn’t know what she is missing.” Terry teased, holding the door open for Mycroft who tipped his head with two fingers in a way of saying good-bye, seemingly ignoring the teasing.  
“Try to make the best of it. I won’t talk to you unless you bring back tales of horror and wonder!” Terry yelled down the hall after him.  
Mycroft threw his head back and laughed. “Idiot.”  
He still smiled to himself when he loaded the luggage in the back of the car. Leaving two days before all the others felt strange. He envisioned Terry and Laurence sitting together tonight over their habitual cup of tea brewed in their illegal water cooker. They called each other idiots but in the end it came down to being dependent on each other. Most others ignored them where they could, the three of them together however, they had established their authority among their peers.  
Dawn fell as they turned around the final corner to their house, soon they were surrounded by the woods of their neighbour, the long, straight alley leading towards the blinking lights of his paternal home. He took a final, deep breath as he saw the dark, curly head fly towards the car, the driver gave him a compassionate smile over the mirror.


	12. The Melancholy of Parallel Universes - Mycroft

Early in the mornings, the silence was the deepest but also welcoming. The kind of silence you wouldn’t have to feel ashamed about. The silence that ought to be. Mycroft breathed it in together with the cold remains of smoke from the fireplace, swifts blowing in through the cracks in the windows and doors from outside. Reminders of winter in the sweet of spring breeze. He dressed quickly, grabbed his back and made for the door, no one yet up to notice his departure. They wouldn’t notice he was gone before he returned. He walked quickly, cross field, the wet grass, leaving trails on the leather of his shoes and the seams of his trousers. As he climbed over the fence of their neighbour’s field, the horse standing there paid him the courtesy of short interest before returning to its business of grazing, its breath mingling into the air as foggy clouds. The grass slowly ebbed into the bordering woods, the ground here being dry and brown, the roof of leaves above allowed for little humidity to actually reach the ground. He hurried through the maze of stems, knowing his trail exactly. The small river had grown marginally from the constant rain during the week, it greeted him louder than usually as he jumped over it in one, swift leap. The gavel path was grey and as it turned, the village came into view, the tower of the cathedral being the first to greet him as it struck eight. The tingle of the bell at the door to the bakery was the next stop on his well-adjusted journey on days like this. The woman behind the counter greeted him with a friendly smile, lines being added to her face each time he saw her and the sweet smell of her perfume mingled in the scents of baked goods made the face of his grandmother flash in front of his eyes. She wrapped a bun in a paper bag, the sticky, sweet glaze sticking to it and making it transparent. Theirs was a conspiracy long standing, he remembered the day when his mother had declared their house to be one free of artificial sugar. He had sighed and accepted his lot, simply adding this stop to his route to the library whenever he was home. Arguing with his mother was pointless; he didn’t understand her emotional reasoning that seemed so unimpressed by any arguments of logic and she made that sort of worried face when he indulged in the exercise anyway. How a mathematical mind like hers could allow outbursts of sentiment to govern her was beyond him. Though he understood the outbursts and being pressed for it would have had to admit of sharing this tendency for violent feeling, he never would have dreamt of burdening his surroundings with them. Crying over a poem like Wordsworth’s Nightingale was one thing, admitting to it or doing so in the company of others was an entirely different thing all together. 

 

The lady at the library had passed on to calling him Mr Holmes sometime last summer, an effect he blamed on his exercising that finally showed some results on carving a human form from the chubby remains of earlier years.  
“Shakespeare?” he asked and she pointed towards a shelf at the back with a witty smile.  
“Mr Holmes, I am sure you would find these texts in your father’s library as well.” She smiled over the rim of her glasses plastic frame. He smiled back, evading the answer. Of course he could have found them there and though Bernhard understood that these were part of what you called an education, he frowned upon the fervency and enthusiasm with which Mycroft devoured them and had made it clear on several occasions he would have preferred him to spend his time on more fruitful reading. Her eyebrows lifted slightly when she noted down the final book at the bottom of his pile.  
“Advice for writers.” She muttered, and he blushed.  
“Coursework.” He packed them all into his bag, piling the books for Sherlock on top, the unmentionable was stuffed to the very bottom.

 

He could hear Sherlock’s voice all the way down to the hall, the excited shrieks and fast, unstoppable chatter. As expected, no one had taken notice of his departure. The books were accepted with glowing eyes that made his heart do strange things and coaxed a smile from his mother.

 

They sat together for a long time that night, saying little. He held the cup of tea with both hands, staring into the flames of a dying fire. She looked tired, more tired than he remembered to have seen her. She knew he knew and somehow it thickened the air towards the unbearable.  
“You are alright with this?” he finally opened the box of the Pandora, avoiding her eyes.  
She sipped her tea, staring into the glimmers of vanishing wood. “You worry too much, sonny. It’s all fine.”  
“If you insist.” He quipped.  
“Your father deserves a break from my moody self, he’s stuck with me here every day, might do him good and Sherlock…” she sighed a smile, turning the cup in her hand.  
Mycroft huffed, his eyes were unavoidably drawn towards the pile of luggage Sherlock had left in the corner of the room. He sobered his face of anger and searched for words. She watched his inner combat with a sad smile.  
“I’ll watch them.”  
“I’m sorry.” She whispered voicelessly, cradling her empty cup in both hands. The wood in the fireplace cracked and the pile collapsed with hissing sounds, a cloud of sparks flying into the room.  
“When I’m back…”  
He nodded, saving her the effort of having to finish a sentence they both knew was nothing more than wishful thinking. 

 

At night the silence was deep, but not of the comforting sort. It was screaming out at him, asking for action of what kind, he knew not. Mycroft turned uneasy in his bed for a long time that night, finally giving in as the clock in the hallway struck five. He shuffled down the hall, finding his father’s study enlightened. The man smiled when he slipped inside, Mycroft wouldn’t understand why. He was a mystery to him, though more predictable than his mother, his opinions and decisions followed principles he was unable to share.  
“So.” Was all there was to say to break the ice. Mycroft answered with a half-smile, wondering on where to pick up the thread without turning it into a poisonous snake.

“I’m glad you agreed to come. I’m sure I will find time to show you around the office. Might also add to your profile when you apply for…” he stopped. Breathed. Terrain filled with landmines. Started again. “I’m sure I’ll find time to show you around the office. And you can work on your things the rest of the time, the embassy promised to send someone round to have an eye on Sherlock. What is it you’re working on?”

“A play. It’s the end of term play. I’m writing it. You said you’d come. Remember?” There was that frown again, the uneasy smile. The fear of his son losing track of what was important in life. His father’s life.  
“It’s important to have cultural interests in your portfolio. For applications.” Mycroft added and Bernhard nodded fervently. He believed anything Mycroft told him in that respect. The man was awestruck whenever Mycroft talked about school, the institution he had only been able to dream of as a boy. He understood little of what was going on there. Terry had once in a beer infested mood raised the question of whether there was more than one reality and Laurence had protested with all his might until he had hit his head on the desk he was sitting under during their nightly meetings. Mycroft had kept his silence thinking of his father and himself, living proof of parallel universes existing and mingling.

“What…” Bernhard cleared his throat.

“Modern version of Hamlet.” He skipped in, knowing to have closed the topic with that. His father nodded again, a frown between his brows.

“Once took your mother to see it in west end. Seemed a little…”

“The melancholic air is due to the changing attitude of the era. Renaissance man and stuff.” He spoke to fast and overly eager as he felt weakness spreading in his limbs when he remembered how he had cried reading it the first time under his duvet. He had been eight or nine and had understood only half of it and still. He swallowed twice, unable to finish the thought.  
They looked at each other with helpless exasperation.  
“How serious is it?” Mycroft finally asked in a small voice.


	13. A Garden Party II - Mycroft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is rather short but I intend to stick with the layout of the Sherlock part of the story so I had to break it here. Next one will be longer again. Promise.

They never had parties at home. Those few people his parents mingled with socially, hardly ever made it all the way to their place. Theirs was a place where time ended. A dead end in the universe. Life passed their place by, a distant roar to be heard from the hill tops towards the fish lake. Now he was surrounded by it. The foreign place filled with people, their talking, their smell. Lights. Flowers. Their father a different person. Charming, happy, funny even to those that were into this kind of thing. Last year he had lied about the end of term and spent a few days at Laurence place. The townhouse was never empty, Laurence mother a glittering centre of constant attention. He had enjoyed the careless position of an onlooker, free to come and go as he pleased. He had taken hours of the day to stroll around town, and he remembered the one moment most vividly when he had stood in the middle of Piccadilly Circus at dawn, lights flashing on around him, the traffic screaming at him: alive, alive, alive. When he returned home he had to excuse himself from dinner because his heart was pounding so hard in his chest that sweat was seeping through the silk of his shirt. Laurence mother showered him with concerned affection, and smiled gingerly when she found him sitting in the window of the upstairs drawing room looking out on the city’s lights with ragged breathing.

His father now so alien, had caught the attention and possibly affection of a colleague’s wife, he had seen her before, she had been in a picture sitting next to him in the newspaper. His mother never went to these occasions and Bernhard had stopped asking. That woman was sparkling and glamorous in that faked, painted on way. That way of old people who latch onto the remains of their youth without any sense of dignity. He didn’t seem to mind, the distance between them shrinking with each encounter on the restricted space of the party. Her husband was watching them as well, ignoring Mycroft’s interrogative expression as their gazes met on his father’s hand on her bare shoulder.

“I don’t think anyone ever marries for love. I rather think most people marry because they hate each other and want to make sure they can torture the other one for the rest of their lives.” Terry had stated one evening after his mother had declared she needed a flat in town to herself and would not be home for Christmas. His twin sister Irene went with her, taking advantage of their mother’s new life - now filled with yoga lessons and tennis instead of charity meetings at church and pottery – leaving little time to control her daughter’s coming and goings.

“Why don’t they just get divorced?” Mycroft had asked. He relied very much on Terry’s ability to explain the incomprehensible details of social interaction.

Terry shrugged. “Money, confirmed habit, laziness, masochism, sex? And in the case of my parents the illusion it might be better for us to keep up the pretence. Broken home and all that shit. Mum thinks we don’t know what is going on.”

“Carelessness and lethargy.” Mycroft added to the list, speaking to himself as he caught sight of his brother.

“You know he gets sick when he doesn’t get enough sleep and is all overexcited.”

Bernhard looked at him with dewy eyes. And it dawned on him. He didn’t know. He hadn’t been there. “Is he asleep now?”

“Yes.”

“You should apologize to Anne. She was only trying to be friendly.” Bernhard added, half way out the door.

“You should call mummey some time tomorrow.” Mycroft shot back, producing a long line between his father’s brows.

“I’m sure she is fine.” He finally delivered along with a smile that was only half addressed at his son, half at a group of guests, gesturing for him to join them.

 

At night the asthma got bearable. With temperature falling, the air moved more easily in and out of his lungs. The cook threw him a smile as he still sat in the kitchen when she dried the last of the plates. He took it from her tired and bloated hands as he had done with the rest of them and carried the entire stack towards the cupboard. The last people were leaving, the woman and her husband being among them. He could see her lean against a car in the driveway, he half turned away from her talking to her through gritted teeth. She rolled her eyes and swayed on her heels. The driver appeared and he guided her into the car by her left arm, dropping her rather carelessly as it was sure she would land in the back seat. Their eyes met yet again but this time it was Mycroft who averted his first, a sudden wave of disgust making him lose his defence. The last of staff collected their bags and left. With the door closing behind the last of them, Mycroft leapt for his bag and dumped the books on the teak table in the dining room. Opening the window towards the garden he breathed in deeply. Hamlet’s ghost only appeared at night. The night was the only time his own would leave him alone.


	14. A Letter from Home - Mycroft

“Julia, Mycroft, my older one.” His father nodded in his direction as he slipped into his jacket. The night before was still visible under his eyes. She was young, not overly pretty. Maybe three years between them. She looked confused, being asked to babysit someone almost her own age.

“He’ll show you how to deal with Sherlock. Basically don’t feed him sugar, it sends him into overdrive and keep an eye on him. Blink, and he will have set fire to himself.” Bernhard straightened his tie and picked up his bag. His eyes kept passing Mycroft’s face who gave him an intense stare nevertheless. Guilt and shame in equal measures, Mycroft decided with a grim sense of satisfaction. His father cleared his throat. “Have fun.” He added in a toneless voice, one hand already on the door’s handle.

They stared at each other as the door closed with a small sound. His mind ran through his options quickly. Terry’s voice and face appeared from some corner of his brain with an ambiguous smile. He understood and changed the tactics in a wink of an eye.

“So, Julia.” He winced the moment his words left his mouth in a rather more sultry pronunciation than he had intended. She gave him a pitiful gaze and half a smile.

“Ah. Yes. Where is your brother then?”

“Asleep. We’re alone.” Terry began pulling his own hair, Laurence almost falling over with laughter.

“Right.” She turned and left him standing there in the hall, somewhere in no man’s land between the option of apologizing and hasty retreat upstairs. He chose the latter as his face had turned a deep shade of purple. His own defeat was staring at him from the mirror over the sideboard.

 

She was one of those girls that felt winning the affection of children to be an affirmation of their own charm and pleasant character. He watched her fail with Sherlock. His brother had close to no experience with people of her age and sort and reacted with disinterested confusion to her attempts of bribery.

Sherlock was exhausted but still refused to sleep for a long time. Mycroft watched her struggle and fall victim to his little tricks of buying times for a while with guilty glee. Eventually he stepped in and put his foot down, discussing the younger one into surrender.

“The two of you are so cute together.” She giggled as he closed the door upon the sleeping form of his brother.

Mycroft frowned at her, or maybe at the blush creeping up his throat again. “Would have been your job, not mine.” He muttered, lacking the energy for a full blown accusation. He went into the kitchen in search for a tea before starting on his reading but she followed him, lingered behind his back.

“You’re any good at school?” she finally asked as he poured water into the cup.

“Obviously.”

“You’re like your dad then? God, it must be so cool to have a dad like that. He is so…interesting and funny and…” she stopped mid-sentence as she became aware of the inappropriate amount of excitement in her voice. Mycroft gave her a look, trying to look disgusted but his earlier defeat was still fresh on his mind and he failed miserably, his nerves making his eyes wander away from her face constantly.

“How long is your work with him to last then?” he asked into the awkward silence, checking the clock and hoping for his father to come back to relive him from her presence.

“A just another month. I hope to be allowed back another time. Do you know like…does he do that?”

Mycroft sighed, watched her play with a curl in her hair. “How would I know? You have spent more time with him than I have this last year. ”

She looked unconvinced, then confused. “He said you…like…Eton, right? And, uhm, your mum? Are they…like living together?”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, sipping his tea. She watched him with large eyes, hand falling away from her hair under his continuous stare. Terry reappeared, but Mycroft decidedly shushed him, he rolled his eyes and shuffled away into a dark corner of his mind.

“Yes.” He finally answered, more a question than an answer. She blushed and began collecting her things, dropping them into a large wildly coloured bag she had hung on one of the kitchen chairs.

 

Bernhard smiled at her when he came, offering her a ride back. Mycroft winced at the change of intonation as she answered, watched them make their way to the car.

“Mycroft?” a sleepy voice behind him brought him back from dark thoughts.

“Go to bed.” he growled, but the sound of bare feet on the tiles told him his order was ignored.

“Are elephants really afraid of mice?”

 

“You had a letter. From some Earl from the past by the look of it.” Bernhard said as he placed in his line of sight on top of his book. The envelope showed his name in pale blue ink, Terry’s hand unmistakably. He ignored his father’s curious stare, placing it in the back of the book. Bernhard sighed and retreated towards the living room, the TV being turned on only seconds later.

He huffed at the red seal being pressed on top of the envelope being so typically for Terry who always had to take everything to the extreme, would have been happier as a crazy scientist or poet in the nineteenth century. And somehow he felt like it himself, sitting on the veranda in the light of a single lamp, the sound of the Indian night lulling him into a fantasy of being the last man around, a brave but lonely soul about to receive news from a distant home.

_Dear Myc,_

_You only left two days ago but already the world is toppling and turned on its head without you here to stop it. Laurence has gone completely mad, told me he would not speak to me or you ever again unless we finally agreed that the Romantics are the ultimate revolution in literature and write some kind of Byronic role into the play for him. I told him to get a grip, but you know him and I regretted my attempts of addressing reason with him. He freaked and yelled at me, told me I understood nothing of life and should get a grip myself. Though we both know his ups and downs in mood, this time it seems to be something much more than usual. I tried to call his place to talk it over but he refused to take the call. I’m done with this. Maybe you will get through to him, you always were more of an influence on him._

_I arrived home the other night in excited anticipation to find Irene there with the entourage of girls she keeps dragging along but nothing of the sort. She has gone to London with them, my mother now apparently having completely changed her mind on the negative influences of city life on young people and allowing them to spend their time whichever way they want. I plan on joining them there soon, who knows how long this madness is to be playing out to my advantage. You and me, Myc, the last creatures of reason living among a herd of fools._

_Father is having a lot of letters from a lawyer downtown lately and one came here this morning. Might be they are going for divorce after all. I can see you wrinkle your face all this way over the continent and ocean parting us right now and no, I don’t mind, we both prefer the painful break to the unreasonable agony of carrying on, I assume. I think the old man reached breaking point when mum appeared in some dreadful paper having drinks with several football players. You know how much he loves to brag about reputation and ancient shit like that._

_And meanwhile I know you happy, enjoying your exotic holiday. Don’t you let my whining distract you. I only demand you to let me take part in your adventures and expect the most detailed description of everything you experience there to lift my spirits out of the mud surrounding it here._

_And so I stay your most affectionate friend,_

_Terence_

He smashed another mosquito on his forehead, swearing under his breath. Adventures indeed, he thought as he passed the snoring figure of his father on the couch on his way to bed. He dreamt of Terry standing on Piccadilly with lights flashing by and all around him and himself running as fast as he could but never reaching him. He woke and reached for the inhaler, his lungs being blocked and whistling whenever he tried to draw in air.


	15. Change - Mycroft

He knew he should be caring about what Sherlock had found to keep him occupied but he couldn’t get himself to. Terry’s letter had left him deeply dissatisfied with the state of things and the air around them became harder to breath by the hour. He suffered through the afternoon on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep with remains of dreams mingling in the strangest ways with reality. He woke several times confused not to find Laurence sleep in a bed opposite. It set it heart pounding as if it was determined to jump out of his chest. He tortured his mind with attempts to determine the exact moment Laurence had begun to behave so strangely overemotional and confronting. Always on the edge, somewhere between ecstasy and deepest desperation. It was nothing like him, he had known him for years and remembered him as a retreated person, eager not to be noticed. At first Mycroft had been happy to share a room with someone who offered so little opposition to whatever his own plans and desires, soon he learned to value him for the determined loyalty he displayed whenever Mycroft had managed to get himself noticed by others again who threatened to punish him for it. A thing to happen quite frequently in his first few years at school, when he still thought telling people what you thought of them would change anything. Laurence had little to offer in way of protection but somehow insisted on sharing the beatings and detention with him. Terry had been a very different story. The moment he had walked into their classroom for the first time with the most radiant smile he had ever seen on anyone facing a double period of Latin, he had secretly admired him for his cheeky wit and fearlessness. The teacher called them the triumvirate behind their back, a name Mycroft accepted with pride feeling the temptations of belonging pull him under. He fought to get himself out of the embrace of the deep cushions of the couch and dragged himself towards the study. He knew Laurence’s number from heart, there had been a strange phase when he had called there almost weekly to chat to his mother. She didn’t seem to mind and somehow it calmed him to know that he could go back there if ever he needed to. Neither he nor she had ever mentioned their chats to Laurence. Somehow it felt inappropriate as had the entire stay after the drawing room incident.

The line took a while to connect, he thought about the signal worming its way through the line at the bottom of the ocean, through the canal and then all the way into the heart of London. All that way and no one on the other side to pick up. He waited impatiently, drumming his fingers against the desk until he realized that was a gesture he had seen in his father. Slamming down the speaker he slid deeper into the chair and reached for a fresh sheet of paper.

Dear Terry,

Thank you so much for your letter. As to your assumption that I should be in the middle of excitement here, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Days are beyond dull. I can only work at night as Sherlock and my father keep pestering me with the burden of their existence. With my brother being more than just his usual pain, he sent one of the spitlickers from the office to babysit. She is also a right pain. Though she would probably be tickling your fancy. I don’t understand how you could ever be actively searching the company of girls like her, such an annoyance and waste of time.

 

He dropped the pen impatiently with something turning within him without giving itself up to being uttered in just the right way.

Sorry to hear your parents are causing you trouble. He added, signed the letter and sealed before there was any time for reconsideration. Unease stayed with him without ever revealing its true origin to the conscious part of his mind.

“There is a call for you downstairs.” The housekeeper was anxious to wake him from his slumber quickly, she gently shook his shoulder as he had dozed on the covers of his bed. Mycroft stumbled downstairs and found the speaker turned over, lying on the desk.

“Hello.” He recognized Laurence’s mother immediately. He cleared his throat and closed the door on Julia throwing in curious glances.

“How is he?”

“It’s good you called.”

There was a meaningful pause raising his anticipation.

“There is something Laurence should have told you about quite some time ago but he…” her voice faltered. He waited. She swallowed audibly.

“He isn’t well, hasn’t been for quite a while. He didn’t want anyone of his friends to worry, I think he dreaded the pity.”

“What is it?”

“Cancer. He won’t be returning to school for the next term, Mycroft.”

“Oh.” It was all he was able to come up with. She kept talking about treatment and that they should interpret his strange behaviour in the light of this, that he would probably appreciate not mentioning it and acting normally. Somehow it passed him by. He thought of Laurence falling behind when they had run from the ward as they had sneaked out one night. Of him complaining about strange fits of pain in his muscles without having exercised. Pale cheeks, pale eyes.

“I’ll try to convince him to talk to you. I know he wants to, it’s just…”

“Yes.” They kept the silence between them. “Thank you for telling me.” He added finally before softly putting down the speaker.

“Where is your brother?” Bernhard entered the room, unaware that his son had been sitting there for hours without ever moving, staring into the moving shadows in the green outside. Slowly life seeped back into him, muscles getting ready to move.

“Outside.” He managed, intonation turning it into a half question. Bernhard sighed and left, Mycroft could hear him call for the younger one in the garden. Terry sighed as well, disappearing from the corner of the desk where he had been keeping him company as he brooded over memories. Laurence had always been there. He wouldn’t any more. Change. There was nothing more painful.

They talked about some snake Sherlock had seen in the garden, the product of a brain expecting excitement and producing it itself when being denied by reality.

There were steps on the stairs that night, steps that ought not to be there and which gave proof of their father’s strategy of denying reality to wear him down. Maybe it was a good thing Sherlock should occupy himself with the fantasies of his overheated mind, change would find them both soon enough.


	16. Death - Mycroft

She was in the kitchen in the morning when he entered, rearranging her baggy top with a guilty air, it kept slipping down her shoulder and would bring the strap of her bra on show. Mycroft rolled his eyes and made sure she saw it, satisfied to find her unsettled enough to withdraw to the living room without a single word being uttered between them. He poured water onto his tea and watched it darken until the pattern at the bottom of the cup disappeared. Bernhard entered the kitchen, immediately sensing the tension in the room but unable to define it, he looked back and forth between them. Mycroft ignored his stares fixating the gardener that was cleaning the porch with a very old broom, drew the belt of his gown tighter and drank down his cup in one big sip. After standing in the room for a few seconds helplessly, his father finally made up his mind an joined Julia in the living room, he could hear them talking but couldn’t make out more than single words.

“Bye.” Her voice was whiny and almost childish when she passed behind him on the way to the door. He didn’t react, watched her leave without any acknowledgement of his father standing behind him in that demanding fashion only parents and teachers were able to.

“She is sleeping here now?” he quipped at him as the gate fell closed behind her.

“We had to sort some papers last night. It got too late to ask the driver to get her home.” His father had begun to butter some toast, the knife making nerve-racking sounds as it scratched the crisp surface. Sherlock entered, attaching himself to his father’s leg immediately with sleep heavy eyes. Some dream about snakes and mother. Mycroft listened with his back turned on them both; cutting open an orange that he arranged on the younger’s favourite plate. An Indian prince riding an elephant through a shower of flowers from a bystanding crowd was its ornament, the cheesy and sweet kind of depiction a child of Sherlock’s limited intellectual abilities was likely to fall for.

It was a sequence from the Ramayan, that much he was able to make out from the figures though his mind was to occupied otherwise to follow the plot in detail. Brothers fighting over the inheritance of an empire. Laurence would have liked the mysterious air of the show, the flickering shadows of the huge figures, the archaic screams and sounds of the demons and gods as they entered the battle field among the mortals, Mycroft thought. Then he remembered that he might be occupied with other things at the moment and felt stupid. With the last evil one slayed and some couple happily reunited, he searched for his brother’s head in the crowd. The curly source of trouble was nowhere to be spotted.

“He’s gone.” He tapped his father’s shoulder who turned in response and smiled his office smile at him.

“Who my dear?” eyes vacant, mind somewhere else.

“Your son.” He sighed, turning on his heels to find his brother. The crowd was thick. No way of getting through without touching others. He kept his eyes wandering, always on the lookout for places that could catch the boy’s attention. Then he saw him, browsing a stall filled with glittering trash. Like a magpie, he thought, pushing his way through the chattering mob.

His hand was warm in his, he tried not to press it when holding on to it. He thought it unwise his brother should know all too well what power he held over his brother’s heart. He followed him willingly back into the thicket of people, allowed himself to be pulled wherever his brother’s fancy required. The woman stood in a gap between two booths, unobtrusive, her customers seemed to flock to her without her having to actively approach any one. Sherlock was no exception, eyes blown wide as he took in her colourful attire and mysterious air.

“You have no reason.”

He turned and walked to get rid of the knot in his throat. Sherlock stayed behind, just to prove a point, he assumed. There was lead in his every bone. People left. That’ s what they did. And if they had no other way, they died. He wondered how long it would take. Hamlet had escaped by simply acting crazy. Or maybe he had gone mad after all. The tragedy ended not before everyone was dead. And Laurence would make the start.

“You alright, son?” His father gave him a worried look over the rim of his reading glasses as he looked up from the papers. Mycroft held the glass with ice cubes against his forehead. They sat on the balcony, sharing one lamp on a small table between their deckchairs. Moths were attacking it again and again before tumbling and falling, Mycroft watched them fall eventually, last flickers of life leaving them.

“Yes. Everything fine.” He spoke toneless. Bernhard folded the paper, inspecting him a little longer. “You could talk to me.” The ageing man muttered, half to himself.

“About what?” Mycroft asked under his breath, eyes closed as condensed water ran down his forehead, down the back of his nose, along the side of his nose until - stopping for a second at the tip of his nose as if collecting their final thoughts - they took their final fall, smashing and spreading on the linen of his trousers.

“I don’t know.” Bernhard sighed. “Whatever turned you so moody and dark lately.”

His older one laughed tonelessly. Bernhard sighed once more and picked up the paper again.

“Are you still about with that boy…father is in …”

“Terrence. Yes. “

“You might want to be a bit gentle around him when you’re back at school, his parents are filing a divorce. Could get nasty. Neither she nor he will be giving up anything without a fight.” He pointed to a small article in the paper, talking about the falling stocks of their company.

“Checking on Sherl before going to bed.” He carefully lowered the glass on the table, next to some of the moths’ corpses. Bernhard nodded, turning to the sports section. He flicked one of the insects from the table with two fingers to make room for his ashtray, sporting the remains of a cigar. Mycroft followed it with his eyes, the long curve it took before landing a final time.


	17. The Ape - Mycroft

“Myc?” Sherlock rattled the handle of his locked door. Mycroft turned towards the window that showed a small extract of the pitch dark night outside.

“Fuck off.” he spoke into his pillow, the rattling went on.

“Go annoy Julia! After all, I think that still is part of what she is paid for.” He spat in the direction of the door before covering his face with the corner of his duvet. The handle was pushed once more with full force, then he heard the seams of Sherlock’s pyjama trousers lug over the wooden floor as he trolled away. His father’s baritone made it through the floor as he was taking one annoyed call after the other in the study below.

_“If you did it more often you wouldn’t have so many headaches.” Terry’s voice came back to him on his way back into slumber and the episode rose up from the depth of his mind. His friend had lingered around his bed in the hospital ward at school where Mycroft had been sent after his vision had blackened out during Maths._

_“Thought you were supposed to cheer me up” he answered, pressing down the wet towel on his forehead._

_“Just some friendly advice.” Terry chirped, he had moved a chair very close, he could feel his presence as a warm aura without seeing him._

_“Ridiculous.”_

_“You never have, have you?” Mycroft rolled his eyes in response, relying on Terry knowing him well enough to know he had without seeing it._

_“My brother has a dog. Before my mother took him to the vet he would mount everything in his reach.”_

_“See, even the dog knows.”_

_“Oh for Christ’s… get lost or I shall ask the nurse to remove you for indecent behaviour.”_

_Terry chuckled, taking Mycroft’s hand off the cloth, replacing it with his own._

Father and son entered the kitchen almost simultaneously, harnessed in their matching dressing gowns mummey had thought to be a good idea. She had clapped her hands with glee as he and his father had stood in front of the Christmas tree, staring at each other in disbelief in the jade green monstrosity. Mycroft had tried to imagine the face of the sales assistant at Harrod’s when she had asked for matching dressing gowns for her son and husband.

They prepared their respective tea in silence and unintended synchrony.

“What is it?” Bernhard finally hissed, clearly frustrated by the fight that hung in the air between them, waiting for its chance to bloom into full blown conflict.

“Nothing.” Mycroft pressed through his teeth in response.

“Right. So why do I feel like have done something all wrong again?”

“How do I know?” Mycroft answered with faked sweetness.

“It was of importance that I should have that conversation last night. There are…things at stake, it is the work that pays for your food and…books, young man.” He picked up one of the books on the sideboard, read the title and rolled his eyes at the name of the Bard.

Mycroft snatched it away from him, caressed the cover with one hand. “He could have wandered to God knows where.”

“Someone needs to have a look at that child at some point.” Bernhard’s wedding ring clanked as his hand slammed down on the kitchen sideboard. “I mean…” he added self-consciously catching sight of his older one’s stony expression.

“Not normal.” Mycroft copied his intonation.

“What have I done to you, son? What is it that makes me so…despicable in your eyes?” Something fell to the floor, he didn’t look to see what it was.

“She is… what? Twenty?”

Bernhard gaped at him as he caught up with his line of thought, he could see it in the reflection of the window. Those moments he held power of his father were few but he enjoyed the more for it.

“Mycroft Holmes, you really think I…”His mouth opened and closed several times. “That is ridiculous even for your standards. You should stop reading that much and grow up.” His face was back under complete control when Sherlock entered the kitchen. Frustration hit Mycroft with full force. Open ends. No business was ever finished in this family. He wanted to scream. Yell. Insult his father. Instead he smacked the working surface of the kitchen hard, regained control overh is muscles and stormed towards his sanctuary upstairs.

“Did you fight?”

Sherlock’s small frame felt soothing in the crook of his arm. He ran his fingers through the greasy streaks of hair. There was so much of it. His own was already growing thinner. With a sting of pain he realized this kind of cuddles would have to end once Sherlock entered school with him this summer. The younger one would have to fight hard for his survival without being mocked for being overly attached to his brother. Mycroft lifted his arm, carefully widening the gap.

 

“Letter for Mr. Holmes.” Bernhard spoke in a mocking voice as he dropped the envelope next to Mycroft’s plate at dinner. Mycroft took it and shoved it into his pocket without raising his eyes from the bowl of soup in front of him.

“Stop slurping.” Bernhard muttered at Sherlock before disappearing behind his newspaper at the head of the table. The younger one looked at Mycroft, then kneeled on his chair and leaned over the bowl like a dog, drinking the broth from it directly. His brother swallowed a giggle just before it boiled over and would have alarmed their father in his paper exile. The phone rang before he had reached the bottom of his plate and Bernhard disappeared, yelling for Julia who rushed in both arms full of files.

“Are we going again, tomorrow?” There was a sparkle in the pale blue eyes on the side of the table across from him. Their father’s voice seeped into the room despite the closed door. One corner of the paper had dropped into his now cold soup. Mycroft watched the words dissolve in chicken broth.

“My feet hurt.” He whined, slouching into his chair.

“Please?” He searched the younger face, thinking about their day in the streets, deducing people. “Alright.” There was a tiny smile shared as the housekeeper removed the emptied plates.

The letter was forgotten until it pressed into his side uncomfortably when Sherlock moved on the couch to hang his feet over his. The boy was completely captured by some game show where contestants climbed slippery walls and fought through dirty water to find some tokens. So he was able to open it without being interrogated.

_My dear Myc,_

_As they say, where there is light, there is shadow. My light is called Adriana. I know I say this often but you have to believe me just once more, I have never felt this way for anyone._

_My sister brought her to my mother’s apartment. We spent most of the last two weeks there, mum is out all the time anyway. No idea what she gets up to, not that I care. Irene has a friend here who got access to her dad’s credit card so we get round quite a bit. We met Adriana at some birthday. Believe me, thunder struck me immediately. She is the most gorgeous creature I have ever met. Her hair is long and dark, her eyes are on fire. Oh Myc, I wished you could see her, she would convince even you to give up your disbelief in love and romance and make you wander the street sleeplessly. She wasn’t interested in me at all at first till that legendary night. It all started when Irene got into one of her tantrums because mum had not allowed her to go to Ibiza with some friends during school time. Not that she would notice if she would go anyhow, but I keep getting side tracked. We were hanging out at Cathleen’s place and then someone had the idea to go to Notting Hill to meet God knows who. I just went along to not lose sight of her heavenly face and legs. The party there soon got out of hand. Someone smashed a glass cabinet, the girl living there freaked, she and Cathleen got into a fight, we all got kicked out. Adriana was furious and said we should take revenge. So I went and got hold of a box of washing powder and dumped into the whirlpool in the balcony. The mess was incredible. We could see the foam dropping down when we reached the street. I think that was when she noticed me the first time and her glorious eyes met mine. Irene somehow had hooked up with a guy that looked like he had stepped out of some vampire movie and he offered to take us all in his car. So we went around for a while, stopped as Mc Donald’s, went back to mums. There wasn’t enough space in the back so Adriana ended up sitting in my lap the entire drive. She and I ended up on the couch, making out back at our place. And here is the great tragedy in my life. The other morning we were woken by a ring at the door, Adriana’s mother had found out what we had been up to last night, some call about the glass cabinet and she wasn’t even supposed to be in town but at some prep course for A-levels down in Brighton. Her mother was freaking out when she noticed my mum hadn’t been in all week and at the state of the flat and so on, threatened to call dad. I don’t think she will though. Most of the old ones’ friends have avoided getting involved in the martial strife. However, she did contact mum who felt obliged to come back, grounded us both and isn’t talking to either of us. So I am forced to watch the love of my life leaving for some stupid prep course and school afterwards and God knows when I will see her again. How am I to continue breathing, I ask you._

_Hope you and your annoying attachment of a brother are well._

Mycroft folded the pages carefully. On the screen two contestants were firing pies at each other in ridiculous costumes. Sherlock was breathing evenly, one hand still buried in a bowl of chocolate buttons.

“So, what are you up to?” Julia dropped in an armchair opposite, waking Mycroft from hi concentration on his answer to Terry. He granted her a short side glance before resting his eyes back on the pages on his lap.

“Writing a letter.”

“Whoa. Who still does that today?” she huffed, getting comfortable. Her eyes wandered through the room, clearly in search for something to keep up the conversation.

“Aren’t you needed in there?” His head pointed towards the leaned door of the study where his father was once more talking to someone. Her figure straightened, she dropped her folded hand between her parted legs with her arms resting on her thighs.

“I’d rather be out here.”

“Why?” he sensed a change in the atmosphere between them and scolded himself for missing the moment and reason.

“Thought you might want to…have a chat?” Her lips glistened somehow unnaturally. Lip gloss. 2.6 kilograms of it she would have eaten by the end of her life. The thought let him shiver and she misinterpreted immediately. A radiant and triumphant smile disformed her polished lips, Mycroft tried to move further into the cushions of the couch.

“But you don’t talk, do you?” she commented on his silence, leaning forward further.

“Not to just anyone.” The blow made her blink twice before she regained her sultry posture.

“Judy?” The voice from the off broke the uncomfortable spell. Her body moved, turned towards the light falling from the slit between door and frame.

“Julia. My name’s not Judy.” she muttered, dragging her feet towards the study.

“I know.” Mycroft said, loud enough to make sure she heard it. Her head turned back once more, giving him a quite different smile this time round.

 

The morning dragged on, with little to do. So he was more than grateful when Sherlock’s urge to show him around the garden gave him an excuse to escape the house and possible encounters with Julia. Things had been easier when there had been clearcut rivalry and dislike between them. Now thing began to blur and would eventually become messy.

“So this is where you disappeared to all the time?”

“Yes! I found it when I was following that snake. Isn’t it brilliant?”

“The snake, I remember.” The thought filled him with dread. Behind closed eyes he saw the younger one stumble along the halls at school surprised at the fact that the boys laughed at him for stories like that. In Sherlock’s mind fantasy and reality weren’t the categories along which thoughts were organised but excitement and boredom, like and dislike. He fought with the urge to push Sherlock away who was leaning against him. Laurence had survived and so would Sherlock. It was a matter of setting him up with the right crowd. And a matter of making sure he would be there in the right moments. Hovering over him invisibly. 1984. Until he had toughened up enough to stand on his own. Time to move again, he could feel restlessness seeping into the smaller body next to him.

“And what is there on the other side of this plot?” he spoke without opening his eyes.

“Not much. The neighbour’s garden.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.”

“Myc. Look. A monkey.”

He cursed chasing Sherlock who had gotten up like a rocket being fired into space. Space would have been an easier surrounding to keep up with him. Breathing was close to impossible. A leg was all he got hold of before his brother began to climb over the wall. The idiot fought back, stumbled, swayed, fell. Sweat pooled on his temples and in his palms. It took him three attempts to pull himself up and jump after the tiny body.

“Are you alright?” Hands searched his limbs, felt his skull underneath the hair. “You idiot.” Mycroft hissed when he found no injuries and pulled him onto his feet.

“It went that way.”

“And how are we to get back, brother mine?” Mycroft moaned, forceful turning him towards the wall. Without the pile of stones it was too high for both of them to pull up onto it.

“Find a door somewhere?” Trust the boy to miss the sarcasm and state the obvious.

“Brilliant. Just brilliant.” Fear filled Mycroft from head to toe as his mind ran through the symptoms of concussion.


	18. The Cave - Mycroft

Mycroft tried to get a closer look at Sherlock’s eyes to check for dilated pupils but the boy freed himself quickly, running after the shadow of the animal that was running through the branches of the trees.

“Sherlock!” he tried to sound threatening but somehow it seemed to have no effect on the boy’s pace. His figure disappeared quickly in between the trees. Mycroft heard his own breathing go through his breast as he followed his brother deeper into the foreign terrain. The monkey tried to get rid of his followers by taking turns and picking up the pace. Then both were gone. He heard the splash of water coming from a grotto at the end of the artificial river. It was guarded by figurines of Gods that seemed to follow him as he carefully got into the water, trying hard not to think of all the insects and mosquitos that probably bread in it. “Sherlock!” he yelled into the blackness before him in vain.

As he entered the semi-darkness, shadows followed him along the moist walls of the grotto. They seemed to grow longer and darker as he felt his way deeper into the cave. He tried to convince himself there was nothing to be afraid of, told himself to be sensible but slowly fear crept up his spine and deep into his mind.

“Sherlock?” The sound of his voice echoed back to him and made him jump though he had produced it. A strange sound escaped his throat and was immediately answered by the monkey finding its escape in attack and running towards him. Later he would swear he had the horrible sound of his brother’s head making contact with the stony wall of the cave as the ape used his shoulder as a platform for its next leap into freedom. He didn’t see it, only reached his brother’s immobile body when he was lying face down in the shallow water of the stream. His hands shook as he fingered and grabbed to get hold of the younger one. There was a throbbing in his skull as well as his chest where his heart was determined to explode while still at work.

The doctor verified Mycroft’s suspicion of concussion with calm disinterest. Bernhard tried to keep up the pretence of being equally uninvolved, the twitch in the corner of his mouth gave him away anyhow as he kneaded the sweaty palms of his younger child.

“I’ll see myself out, Mr. Holmes.” The doctor muttered, pressing the father gently back down on the bed next to the patient.

“No real harm done.” he added to Mycroft, padding his shoulder that was still clung in the ripped and ruined shirt as he passed him on the way out. The blood stain on his chest had turned an ugly shade of brown.

Sudden exhaustion came over Mycroft; he waved a dismissive hand at Julia that seemed to be talking to him relentlessly. The mossy face of the stone god at the entrance of the cave followed him into his dreams when the door closed behind him in his room, dreams in which monkeys eyed him with glowing fiery eyes from every corner, spoke to him in his father’s voice about the futileness of existence.

“He’s well.” Bernhard muttered as he placed a cup of tea on his older son’s nightstand at dusk the next morning. Mycroft carefully made room as he noticed his father gingerly sitting down at the very edge of his bed. They watched the morning creep into the garden in silence, Mycroft sipping on his cup of tea that was prepared just the right way.

“Will you tell her?”

“No point in getting her excited about something that is not to be changed anyhow.”

Mycroft stared into the brownish depth of the cup. Bernhard sniffed, looking for a place for his hands.

“Not your fault.” He whispered to them when they found rest in his lap.

Mycroft nodded into his cup that Bernhard would take from him as he gently slipped out of the room again.

 


	19. Monsoon - Mycroft

_My dear Mycroft,_   
_Things have taken more than one unfortunate turn since my last letter to you. Woe and pleasure once more share an origin and I shall say it without further pomp and circumstance, I might have fucked it up big time._   
_My mother and father might not be talking much to each other lately but they did agree when the topic came up on where Irene and I were to spend the rest of the year –though they had very different reasons for their decisions to have us both back with my father. Mother was not impressed when Adriana’s mother confronted her with all the quilt laden sermons only mothers know how to deliver on how she could not notice us sneaking out, how she could not have noticed we had used her credit cards to buy what she called the content of an entire off license store and how she could not be appalled by now hearing about it. I think my mother is not appalled by anything anymore; she spends most of her days in a strange haze of self-pity and put on overexcitement, but being called upon it by an outsider tipped the balance and she’d rather have us not be witness to her state. My father on the other hand was very appalled by the events and was happy to have us back if only to cut a further connection between her and himself. Irene was furious about having to give up city life again, she somehow has attuned to it quickly and took revenge by not turning up at home for days on end. In her hot-headed anger she overlooked a major flaw in the plan being that my mother neither cared nor noticed and that when the news reached father in those mysterious ways which seem to connect parents over long distances it only strengthened his determination to remove us from unsound influence as he has come to accustomed to refer to mother. He turned up last Monday, packed us into the back of the car and had us taken home._   
_I am not so much in agony about leaving London, for me it would have been only another few weeks before returning to school anyhow but it did remove me one step further from seeing Adriana. Things began to look very desperate when father informed me over dinner that her mother was not all too keen on her keeping in touch with me. I spent an evening brooding over the injustice of my fate until settling on the decision of taking it into my own hands. The next morning I went out as to what should look like my usual walk but went to the station instead and four hours later I disembarked at Brighton. Not being in possession of any funds, I walked and reached Adriana’s college by five in the evening. To this point I had not thought about how to actually find her without bringing too much attention to myself but I was lucky enough to convince a classmate of hers that was hanging around by the gate to give her a message. And indeed she turned up on the assigned place and hour. I can see you roll your pale eyes at me on the futility of the whole endeavour but this is where we differ so much, to me that few hours meant enough to not consider their aftermath._

  
Mycroft folded the pages carefully at this point, news as to how the story ended had reached him long before the letter. The couple had agreed on not going back to their respective destinations but to run off to London for the weekend. London. He could only shake his head at the stupidity of the plan. Of course they were seen, of course they were looked for and found. The verdict was agreed on quickly, Terrence would not return to school after the break. His father had found that the situation was too much of a bad influence on the children and the family found that an ocean between them and what was now turning into the most scandalous divorce of the season would be good for them. A boarding school in New England was found and paid for, by the time he had opened the envelope of the letter, Terry already had touched ground in the new world. Irene was sent to a Catholic equivalent not far from her twin brother but far enough to stop them from getting involved in any mischief together again.  
His brother was moving in the bed behind him, missing the dramatic scene playing out in the sky. The hills that had been glazed in sunshine all these past days and weeks now were covered in a thick veil of approaching clouds. Thunder rolled audibly behind them, producing the overture to a drama he had waited for all this time. He watched people in the street below share his emotional state as they gathered in small, happily chattering groups, children running between the houses with ever increasing noise.  
“Myc?” he picked up the bundle of the bed, placed him carefully in his lap, feeling the warm weight press against his arms. They watched the world breaking apart together, to Sherlock just another in a long string of adventures, to Mycroft another closing act in the tragedy of his life. As small streams developed in the dust below, he thought of Ophelia, drifting down the river in a cloud of flowers, her death pushing Hamlet tormented mind over the edge. Then the memory of Sherlock face down in the water surfaced again and he drew his arms closer around one of the few reasons his existence made sense.

“Happy to get back?” Julia joined him on the stairs leading to the garden. She took her shoes off, placing them so they reached out enough to be covered in the droplets of rain that fell from the roof above.  
“Quite.” He mused, inspecting the pink colour of her toenails. Sherlock stormed towards them from inside, chattering about something he didn’t catch. He placed a hand on the younger one’s arm nevertheless to fake attention. Julia smiled decoding the gesture correctly.  
“I…am sorry at how things played out, I wished I…” Mycroft raised a hand at her when she picked up conversation again later that night. He had become convinced that involvement was the source of evil, one he was to avoid from now on. Maybe his father wasn’t all wrong about he went about life, the time he had got to spend at the office with him had been enough to explain the man’s fascination with his work.  
“Good luck with everything.” He muttered and she nodded towards the floor before strolling off to finalize her packing.

He could see his brother follow the car when it went down the long street between the woods and the neighbour’s field. The boy stopped somewhere near the end of their allotment and Mycroft let out a breath he had been holding all day. Of course he would never mention to Sherlock that he knew about this little ritual taking place whenever he left and certainly not how much it made him come back for every holiday. Because how embarrassing would that be.


End file.
